1985 Raleigh Team USA -dual purpose bike for now

[jamesdak]

I had a mint set of these years ago in the wrong size. Sold them but regretted it since I love the paint scheme on these. Finally picked up another one as a frameset and built it up. Parts are mainly Suntour Superbe with a NOS Sugino Crankset. At first I built it up as a road bike with some nice, plush tubulars. But then I swapped on some old Fulcrum Racing 1 wheels with CX tires and rode it mainly on the back gravel roads and on the mountain gravel. It does need better gearing for the mountain rides, LOL!

Road configuration:

Gravel configuration:

Detailed shots of the bike:

Plenty of clearance for fat tires:

In Action:

 

[cchaven]

Great looking bike. My '84 Racing definately isn't geared for that! I found that out first hand last weekend when the weather was nice.

 

[jamesdak]

Great looking bike. My '84 Racing definately isn't geared for that! I found that out first hand last weekend when the weather was nice.

Yep, I need to find another chainring for mine to have something like a 48/36 combo or even lower. Should be easy to reposition the FD for the smaller chainrings.

 

[jamesdak]

While I'm updating things here this morning. I've made some changes to this Team USA also to set it up better for my off pavement purposes. First was swapping the crankset out for a used Velo Orange setup with 48/34 chainrings. So now I have a usable 34/30 combo for the steep parts of my gravel rides. Shortened the chain a bit and all gear combo's seem to be functioning fine. Then I got rid of the clipped pedals and went for some wide/flat Crank Brother flat pedals. I also was not liking the big knobby CX tires on this since I ride a lot of pavement to get to the gravel So I swapped out the tires for some smoother tread GravelKing 700 x35 tires. Could have gone bigger for sure and may do that in the future. While I was swapping tires I also traded out the Fulcrum Racing 1 wheels for some Campagnolo Sirocco's.