Decals arrived, and it didn't take me long before I was applying them...
Like I said before, these are a close copy of the originals, but with a slight twist. Where the steel work would have a Raleigh worded decal, I thought it better to recognise the quality of tubing they'd chosen. Also, Reynolds were doing that strange thing with Raleigh, and changing their tube names from 753 to 2080 etc. and nobody really knew what 2080 was, so I retained the 753.
The main tubes are identical to the originals, but I've left out the silly oblong with a marble type finish to it.
The cranks were badly scuffed up when I inspected them, and they'd way more chunks out of them than I'd have liked, but I stuck with them to retain as much originality of the original bike. They've gone through many hours of 320 grade wet and dry paper, working through to final polishing you see here. I guess that now they're polished, they've been given a new lease of life, and it's quite easy to keep on top of them every now and then. If I'd left them as they were, they were almost junk! I switched the original rusted chrome steel bolts for some nice alloy ones. Also, both of the rings were covered in black paint, which took an age to get off without damaging anything.
I even had to get a little Black paint touch-up pen to colour in the logo properly...
PIC TO FOLLOW
Other than that, there's been a few Titanium bolts used, namely to replace the seat pin bolt, and the bottle cage bolts.