According to Richard Sachs, the sloping crowns on Raleigh Pro and Team Pro bikes were made by Davis (which also made the 1967 Raleigh competition fork crowns and a superlight 706 gram fork.) If you look at the Davis sloping crown from the top, it has a rectangular squared-off profile. If you look at it from the side, it has an inverted "V" profile with the edges of the "V" squared off nicely. This is how you can recognize the Davis/Raleigh-Pro crowns. These crowns are very different from a Cinelli crown.
http://www.bulgier.net/
In 1976 Raleigh started using these crowns on the competition. I have a 1976 competition with a fork that appears original, however it has Suntour Dropouts on the front and Campagnolo dropouts on the rear. My crown is MUCH (5mm) taller than a raleigh Pro crown at the crown race, and this plus the eyelets add almost 90 grams to the weight of the fork !! (908 vs. about 816 grams for my SB310 Ilkeston crown) :
http://www.ece.ubc.ca/
I imagine that the Pro crown was either specially made, or Carlton
intentionally machined-away about 5mm of these Davis crowns to make
them lighter (The SB310 crown shows spiral marks of machining atop the
races.)
>From about 1971-1975, Raleigh used a different sloping crown on their
competition models. That fork crown has an 'O' shape when you look at
it from the top, and from the side it tapers to a thin point, fore and
aft, rather than being squared-off box-section profile. This is also
a heavy crown - much chunkier than a Cinelli crown. No online pix is
available, please email me for pictures and I will take one tonight.
I wonder if Richard Sachs or another framebuilder knows the maker of this crown? Forks with this crown weigh about 868 grams (see my table of weights above.) It might also have been made by Davis? Or, perhaps it was made by Brampton or Haden?
A 4th type of sloping crown was made by Zeus. These looked more triangular from the front, and had ~3mm raised edges around the triangle, and they said ZEUS (I think on the backside where the brake nut is mounted.)
So there really were a lot of Cinelli knockoff crowns in the late 1960's and early 1970's.
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA, USA