Raleigh Special Products 853 'cross.

[berniethebike]

Just got hold of this - Ultegra / LX / 105 9sp - 853 RSP 'cross bike.
Reputedly used to belong to Barrie Clarke as his team bike (or one of them).
Any ideas as to the age of it - I'm thinking 1998-2001?
HELP!
Cheers

Bernie

 

[mavesyn]

Welcome to the forum.
Nice looking bike...........

 

[bikemeister2000]

Earliest would be late 1999. It was first featured in the "Emma" brochure.

Looks great

 

[David B]

Earliest would be late 1999. It was first featured in the "Emma" brochure.

Looks great

Quite a narrow window for its production, then; I worked in a Raleigh dealer in late 2000 at around the time that the Special Products division was being wound down in favour of some very dull Diamondback-branded road stuff. Sadly, despite a few phone enquiries to Nottingham, I failed to get a recently-discontinued flagship R800 titanium frame [1] on the cheap as there were none left in my size

David

[1] From memory, red and white with a Mizuno carbon fork. Nice piece of kit.

 

[bikemeister2000]

Earliest would be late 1999. It was first featured in the "Emma" brochure.

Looks great

Quite a narrow window for its production, then; I worked in a Raleigh dealer in late 2000 at around the time that the Special Products division was being wound down in favour of some very dull Diamondback-branded road stuff. Sadly, despite a few phone enquiries to Nottingham, I failed to get a recently-discontinued flagship R800 titanium frame [1] on the cheap as there were none left in my size

David

[1] From memory, red and white with a Mizuno carbon fork. Nice piece of kit.

We only built about 30 or so of the cross frame in small batches of 5.
The road bikes were a continuation of the polished and bead blasted ones. I had mine painted as a DHO in red/black with the Mizuno carbon fork. I used a sample Ultegra Flightdeck groupset I got from Shimano, and had Glen Coltman build me up a pair of wheels using the Ultegra hubs on some red Mavics, with the front radial spoked to look like Heliums.

Check out my picture.



and yeah, the Daimondback stuff was no comparison