By the way, Steve's bike is an orange 1974 International with exactly the same decals as mine, including old style fork decals but the Reynolds Tube Co. frame decal. And the frame decal sure looks square to me. So now I've concluded that my earlier conclusion that the frame decal on mine is not original was wrong. I've asked Steve to measure to confirm that the decal is square, but there seems to be mounting evidence that the English Reynolds Tube Co. decal used on Raleighs was indeed square. However, several list members have measured the French Reynolds Tube Co. decals and reported they are slightly but measurably rectangular, slightly wider than high. So it seems either the English and French decals were slightly different shapes, or Raleigh was slightly different from everyone else. The latter seems odd, except that Raleigh, being owned by the same company as Reynolds, would have had the flexibility to modify the decals without worrying about any copyright issues. Still not clear why they would want a slightly different shape decal than Reynolds were supplying to other customers though.
Does anyone out their have a 1974 to 1977 NON-Raleigh bike with an original Reynolds Tube Co. (not TI) frame decal? Could you measure it to determine if it is square like Raleigh or rectangular like the French decal?
In the wider world, I'm sure this extensive thread on the shape of a decal would be considered anal, but this is the kind of detail one must research when trying to do accurate restorations, and I presume there are enough people here engaged in that activity - and enough interested in Raleigh - that I'm not just wasting bandwidth.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Houston, TX
Steve Kurt <kurtsj@mtco.com> wrote: hi gang,
in response to Jerry's quest for the correct decals for a '74 Raleigh International, I took a few quick photos of my bike and sent 'em off to him.
While reviewing the photos, I thought my chainring bolts didn't look
quite right...
http://tinypic.com/
well, I got out the 5mm allen and checked them over, and they were all unscrewed at least 3 or 4 turns! And I just rode the bike on Sunday for 35 miles! I'm lucky I caught them tonight, and not when I was 20 miles away from home wearing my good Dettos.
I can only assume that the CR Karma was working extra fast today. Sometimes a good deed does go unpunished. :-)
Steve Kurt
Peoria, IL