Tales from a workshop

I'm no longer in the recycling centre as you may have guessed from the Venge in the background. My old haunt is still running as a council initiative and it is entirely donation based so they get what they get when they get it.

I now work in a traditional bike shop so I get to work on a much higher standard of old gem. Most of the time..
 
The out-of-focus one above looks like a Raleigh Rapide - it was my first racing bike in the mid 80s, used to do the club '10' every week come rain or shine. I bought a frame on here last year to do a rebuild but haven't got round to it yet (like so many other projects ...)

It's 531 tubes, meaning that the top, down and seat tubes are 531 while the seatsays, chainstays, headtube, BB shell and fork are standard hi-tensile steel, not as good quality as even the 501 tubeset used on one of the other bikes you pictured above. In your position I'd clean it up and give it a good polish to bring out the lustre of the paint, but leave the spec as-is - the Campagnolo 980 gears are good enough and the SR cranks and Weinmann brakes are perfectly fine. The original wheels would have been Maillard hubs and Rigida or Weinmann rims and again are fine, if perhaps a touch heavy. Bar/stem/post were all SR and the saddle normally a Turbo.

I'll be building mine up with a Shimano 600 Arabesque groupset I've had lying around for ages. When I get round to it, that is.

EDIT: only just saw your last post explaining your new job and country etc - and only then noticed now old the thread was! Doh!
 
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