"Heresy - Sacrilege - and other expletives!!!
Wonder no more Dean - they were and are great bikes
Where are you Peter Kohler - man the barricades there is a non believer in our midst!!!!
Mike Mullett Reading UK "
Oh Mike, sometimes even I don't rise to the bait around here. But now that you ask....
I don't even like the notion that to be a "plain ol Raleigh" is something to be sneezed at. Show me a more classic or timeless or practical bicycle than a Raleigh no.1/DL-1 roadster or a Raleigh Sports. Or a Lenton Sports. John Lennon rode a Lenton, not a Quinn. So there!
But at the higher end, I'll match the workmanship of my '48 RRA against ANY bespoke British frameset of its era anyday. And at least it doesn't have those scrollie lugs which make a racing bike look like a Victorian sewing machine or bendy stays or other faddish nonsenses. Raleigh chromework (theirs was the biggest chromeworks in Europe by the way) was the finest in cycling or anywhere. And a stock RRA with the delicious RRA specific components, all British made, is a lot cooler than a British frame with a lot of foreign made bits stuck on it to save a few bob in VAT. The RRA pedal alone is one of the most sublimely beautiful, practical and superbly made cycle component ever made. I suspect a lot of clubmen distained the RRA simply because they couldn't ever afford to buy one. And they sure weren't clocking in time trial records on one with an AC HUB gear like Booty did, now were they?
And I'll match the workmanship, design and weight of my two SBDU frames against ANY Italian frame of the era. Compare the finish, too. Heck, the headtube decal on my '74 Colnago is on.. crooked for heavens sake! How many Italian frames do you see with their original paint? It was crap, pretty but still crap quality on almost all of them. Paint you can read a newspaper through. I had paint lifted off my Masi 3v with plain old tape! Not so with an SBDU frame. And I won't even have you tally the race and stage victories raked up by SBDU frames against ANY of their era. How many framebuilders did the kind of engineering and scientific tests and research the SBDU did? How many framebuilders developed an entirely new frame material like 753? And it was all done in house since, of course, Reynolds was part of the same "rubbish" TI family.
Ah that feels much better now...
Peter Kohler
Washington DC USA