The fork crown shown on the Raleigh [Davis I believe] is a very familular crown for me, it was a popular choice on certain Bob Jackson, and Woodrup frames......but if you saw one before it was actually built into a pair of forks you would realise the amount of work required to get it into shape!......usually by hand with a half round bastard file.
I have 2 original crowns, one imperial, one metric, set aside for future use and will look forward to using them again.
Interestingly, we always referred to them as 'Cinelli' crowns, even though they didn't make em.
BTW, strange promotion pic of the Raleigh......with the brake lever open!?
Cheers
Kevin Sayles
Bridgwater Somerset UK
> 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