Raleigh Lenton Sports- sentimental restoration

[Lenton54]

Re: Re:

There is a Facebook Lenton page if you use it.

Great tip! I've joined that now!

 

[Craigmount]

Hi, how's the 1954 Lenton restoration going? Any chance of posting up a couple of pics on Retrobike?
I went through what you're attempting about 5 years ago, restoration of a green '54 Lenton Sports. The frame was a combination of green paint, black undercoat, and rust :? And I had the same dilemma:- how to keep it as original as possible, whilst making it presentable and useable.

By the way, don't worry about the Sturmey Archer hubs, they're rock-solid! I've found they tend to work 1st time after a few squirts of WD40 and some oil. Might be worth taking apart the FM hub, if you have time, just to clean it up - that's what I did on mine. Take a deep breath and go for it, not as daunting as it looks!!

 

[Lenton54]

Re:

Cheers, will post a photo when I can work out how (keeps giving me a size limit). What did you do with the paint work in he end?

 

[Lenton54]

Re:

Cheers, will post a photo when I can work out how (keeps giving me a size limit). What did you do with the paint work in he end?

 

[Craigmount]

Hi, I stripped the bike down to the last ball-bearing, then dipped the frame for 24 hours in a bath of oxalic acid. I got the oxalic acid powder off EBay.
This removed all the rust, and didn't seem to affect the original paint/decals, which I wanted to keep. Next I ran some old engine oil through the frame tubes, to inhibit any rust developing on the inside of the tubes. Sounds brutal !!
I'm no expert and there are probably better ways of doing this :? . (check the bike forums).

Re uploading pics, I think you have to resize the pics down to less than 540k each or thereabouts. I did this on the laptop using Windows Live Photo Editor, or Paint (click re-size) ... got there eventually!