Raleigh Randonneur 708 1997

[legrandefromage]

Heck, have my 1989 Touriste with its humble 531 butted tubes - unfortunately my own Royal 708 was too small

Its a nice enough ride. Am reluctant to upgrade it from stock as I'm holding out for another Royal or Touristique

 

[winjohn]

Thanks for pointing me here from my 708 Royal thread. This has been very informative and I will be happy if my Royal ends up 50% as good as your build. It has confirmed that the XT groupset s the way to go.

 

[gilmo789]

Mine - No apologies for the dirt.I ride it every day.

 

[doctor-bond]

Mine - No apologies for the dirt.I ride it every day.

Love that: “beausage”.

How do you rate your Dynamo setup - is it a Son? I’m looking at getting something set up for mine.

 

[gilmo789]

Love that: “beausage”.

How do you rate your Dynamo setup - is it a Son? I’m looking at getting something set up for mine.

It got dark all of a sudden and I've moved to the far north so i needed lights. This dynamo setup is new to me but I've run dynamos around the town for a long time now. I think the light makes more difference than the hub tbh. The biggest difference in the hubs as far as I can tell is the power consumption when the light is off; the Son goes to basically 0 whereas the others apparently still drag a little bit. This one is a shutter precision SP8. I have a son delux on another bike both are good.
The light is an Edelux I. apparently the same as a B&M lumotec IQ which I also have. Both excellent. I put one of those smaller B&M Lyt's on my partner's bike. Same hub, noticeable performance drop.

I can cycle on pitch black country roads happily with the above.
I've routed cabled to the back before too, unfortunately most of the modern rear lights look a bit crap so I end up putting LED bulbs in old lights.
this works when riding but goes off at traffic lights and such, The above set up is pretty good and that rear lasts a long time. It's this.

I trawl eBay for deals generally to try and get the parts for dynamo setups but SJS are massively discounting SON hubs atm with the SL connector* so I may go SON again.

*in theory the SL connector requires a specially built fork, but i think it can be made to work in a standard one.

 

[doctor-bond]

Thanks that’s a useful link; & see what you mean about the SL - a massive bargain if you can figure out the connection (looks like the ‘face plates’ could be glued onto the inside of standard dropouts?)

 

[gilmo789]

This Guy has done just that. I think I can make a connector out of thin brass sheet backed with electrical tape. That won't be more than 1mm thick methinks. Just squeeze it in, there's probably enough space for that

 

[MarkRutherford]

Looks a really nice bike.

 

[Waterford 45]

Mine - No apologies for the dirt.I ride it every day.

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What mudguards and tyres are you using?

 

[gilmo789]

What mudguards and tyres are you using?

I think tyres are mad prices at the moment so I go with whatever is on offer or the odd thing that come up in a package on ebay. I'm agnostic about what i use as long as it is slick and not too rigid.
The front is a Vittoria Corsa Graphene - 30c (measures 28 ) I don't know what iteration.
The rear is a WTB exposure - 30c (measures 31)
Really impressed with the Vittoria btw. I've abused it and it's fine.

Fenders I think are some sort of Jamis thing - probably this - that someone must have stripped off a bike, again eBay - metallic blue alloy mudguards mere not easy to find. I got these a long time ago and they have been repaired quite a bit I'm surprised they are still intact. they are nowhere near as light as a honjo or the old french ones. also had to add another stay to the rear because it bounced about to much