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Great stuff. Exactly the same Christmas that I got mine.

Tinypic (where I'd uploaded all the images) has gone offline, along with Photobucket - so I decided to move everything across to Imgur, which seems to be more stable (famous last words). While I was at it I thought I might as well put these few up as well...

That's such a great image. And if I'm honest... yes, I dressed exactly like that back then. I love the reference to "British Precision." The tolerances on my Olympus are about a quarter of an inch all round!

My brother had the red one - although as I mentioned his mudguards didn't last five minutes. I still look at the red mudguards on the one I've restored and wonder at the good fortune I had in finding them. The cool old boy I bought them off had the most amazing garages, quite literally crammed...

Using the spare Club Specials as an experimental guinea pig I set about seeing if I could polish the scratches out. It worked. After some success with them I turned my attention to the All Rounders and flatted them down. I used wet and dry starting with 600 and ending up with 2400 with a lot of...

The mudguards caused me a few issues. Mainly because when I started out I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking for. This resulted in me making a couple of mistaken purchases - firstly a set of Club Specials, which were the wrong model and the wrong size, and then a set of beautiful All...

The chain is original to the bike. It had about four hours in an ultrasonic cleaner, which removed half a ton of Welsh road. After that it was three days in an oil bath. Note correct use of casserole dish lid.

Thanks to some good clear photos of wrecked - but surviving - bikes on eBay I was able to work out that the saddle I needed was a Lycett L'Avenir. Raleigh also fitted the Olympus with both the Brooks Competition and the Wrights W3N, all of which are similar pebbletop saddles. This one was a...

Thanks. I was thinking of doing the red one. Only this time I won't even start unless I can locate a set of mudguards first. I have noticed it's very often only the front mudguards that survive... probably the rear ones all got broken from being backed into sheds whereas the front ones were...

Finding inner tubes was surprisingly difficult. It's one of those things I'd pretty much given up on until a friend told me he'd found some. I was really keen to preserve as much of the look as possible, and that included the style of the valves. Finding 26 x 1 1/4 tubes was hard enough, but...

This is the original inner boss of the TDC freewheel firmly attached to the hub. This necessitated getting hold of like for like replacements for both. Ghetto engineering time. This isn't Rod Hull's Emu in a washing machine, it's my way of holding the central boss of the replacement freewheel...

The handlebar set is a rare NOS find, as were the pedals. I was originally going to rechrome the pedals but the ends were bashed in. The original handlebars and steerer turned out to be bent over by about an inch. Whoever had that bike in Colwyn Bay must have ridden it into every lamp post in...

I managed to get hold of a NOS Huret Svelto rear mech but it had black jockey wheels. It was in need of a service anyway (the grease had solidified) so I set about transferring the red jockey wheels onto it. This involved stripping the wheels down and removing all the tiny bearings from inside...

The brakes were both pretty rusty so I had both sets rechromed. The barrel adjusters and pinch bolts weren't chromed though, they were simply polished as they were never originally chromed anyway.

It was important to me to keep the original Sturmey Archer rims, and S&T did a good job of keeping the stampings. I had to obtain a replacement rear hub though, as the original TDC freewheel was stuck fast to it and no amount of effort would remove it. This of course meant finding a replacement...

The tyres were a lucky eBay find - quite by chance I spotted a real old dog of a Mk2 Olympus, but something about the photos caught my eye. I got the images into Photoshop and zoomed in, which revealed that the tyres were original Raleigh Racing amber walls as fitted to the Mk1 Olympus...

The wheels were in need of rechroming, as were a few other bits and pieces. The rims were straight, but pitted on the outside and quite bad on the inside. Rechroming was done by S&T Plating at Yate.

Mine too. I eventually swapped it for a three speed bike of unknown origin - but it had ape hanger handlebars which were all the rage in 1977. These proved to be something of a mistake as I discovered the first time I tried to ride it into a headwind, with a rucksack full of maths books. And a...

The Raleigh Olympus was produced in two versions. The early Mk 1 was produced between 1970 and 1976, although in the final year or two Raleigh were beginning to cut corners in the spec, the main change being the move from Bluemels All Rounders to Bluemels Populars. Another thing to look out for...