I've got this bike from a pal who i've badgered into selling it to me. I am now its second owner.
It doesn't look like it, but its a raleigh Road Ace Select 600.
At some point one of the joins failed and it went to the Special Products Division for a repair. They sorted the join, replaced the forks, changed the TT cable bosses, and did the respray. From what I believe, they did an excellent job and customer support was again top-notch.
My pal did a terriffic job of looking after the bike. The only reason he parted with it in the end is because he know's I will look after it as well as he did.
First and only issue really was to sort the headset as the old one was past its best. It was an old 600 number and from memory these never had a particularly good lifespan anyway. Unfortunately nothing else would fit as its stack height was so low.
Got a replacement with a low stack height, but was still around 3mm too high. Rather than change the forks or keep running the old, hard to find and unreliable heasets, I found it a simpler solution to shorten the frames head-tube.
Did one end at a time using the other as a datum for keeping the faces parrallel, and then resealed with paint.
I knew this was coming up but was going to take a while to get the bike through various reasons, so used the time to source the parts I needed to get it back to good ridable condition and make it nice once again.
Got it built up now and i'm really pleased with how its come out.
The parts are pretty much what would have been specced from new, and most are NOS, or at least in very good condition.
This bike will probably be used just as much as my main road bike, possibly taking precedence. My current road bike is a 10year old Giant TCR. Obviously it'll be well looked after though as are all my bikes.
This is the first retro road bike i've done. Done lots of bikes in the day, but they weren't retro then. Very happy with it and hope you like it.
Many thanks to Stuart for selling it to me and for looking after it so well. I'm sure he'll enjoy seeing it back together as a working bike.
It doesn't look like it, but its a raleigh Road Ace Select 600.
At some point one of the joins failed and it went to the Special Products Division for a repair. They sorted the join, replaced the forks, changed the TT cable bosses, and did the respray. From what I believe, they did an excellent job and customer support was again top-notch.
My pal did a terriffic job of looking after the bike. The only reason he parted with it in the end is because he know's I will look after it as well as he did.
First and only issue really was to sort the headset as the old one was past its best. It was an old 600 number and from memory these never had a particularly good lifespan anyway. Unfortunately nothing else would fit as its stack height was so low.
Got a replacement with a low stack height, but was still around 3mm too high. Rather than change the forks or keep running the old, hard to find and unreliable heasets, I found it a simpler solution to shorten the frames head-tube.
Did one end at a time using the other as a datum for keeping the faces parrallel, and then resealed with paint.
I knew this was coming up but was going to take a while to get the bike through various reasons, so used the time to source the parts I needed to get it back to good ridable condition and make it nice once again.
Got it built up now and i'm really pleased with how its come out.
The parts are pretty much what would have been specced from new, and most are NOS, or at least in very good condition.
This bike will probably be used just as much as my main road bike, possibly taking precedence. My current road bike is a 10year old Giant TCR. Obviously it'll be well looked after though as are all my bikes.
This is the first retro road bike i've done. Done lots of bikes in the day, but they weren't retro then. Very happy with it and hope you like it.
Many thanks to Stuart for selling it to me and for looking after it so well. I'm sure he'll enjoy seeing it back together as a working bike.
