I’ve been riding bicycles ever since I can remember. I’ve owned all sorts of bikes in my nearly fifty years of existence - BMX bikes, freestyle bikes, mountain bikes, ten speeds, and even a hipster-style fixie, but I when I found this 1959 Raleigh 3-speed I fell in love.
I bought this Raleigh Sports from Craiglist in 2012 and spent an entire year restoring it in our basement. The picture above is the actual photo from the Craigslist ad. Let me tell you, it made the bike look significantly nicer than it really was. It was a mess but almost all the parts were there.
During the course of that, very intense, first year of restoration I found a group on Farcebook called [The Raleigh Bicycle Nottingham] (https://www.facebook.com/groups/theraleighbicyclenottinham) dedicated to the restoration and care of these old English bikes.
Old English bikes are much more complicated to work on than modern ones for a myriad of reasons. The engineers at Raleigh designed a damned good bike, maybe one of the best, but they have their quirks. If you replace one part it often causes a chain reaction and you have to upgrade all of the other parts that work in conjunction with what you replaced.
To make matters worse some of the parts aren’t even made anymore so you have to find used parts if anything is missing or needs to be replaced. Whether it’s advice, parts, referrals, etc. the members of this group have helped me more times than I can count. After eight years of being a member I try to do the same for new members whenever I can. We all have such a shared passion (or more accurately a borderline addiction) the group has become more like a fraternity of friends.
Over the past few years I’ve developed a ritual of doing one major upgrade to the Raleigh bike every year. Three years ago it was the Brooks B66 saddle, two years ago I bought leather hand grips, last year was the (somewhat rare) vintage Prestube rear rack. This year I decided to replace the original steel wheels with aluminum alloy ones.
The original steel wheels worked great for everything but stopping. There are no brake pads on Earth, at least that I’m aware of, that work well with these old steel wheels. Over these past eight years I've become accustomed to pulling the brake lever 10-12 seconds before I actually needed to stop, and had a number of close calls in the process.
This year’s wheel upgrade was very much a team effort. I wanted to keep the original Sturmey Archer hubs and have them laced into new wheels. I reached out to a few of the more knowledgeable members of the Raleigh group, Jay, Darrell, and Jon. They were all very generous with their time and helped me find all the proper parts and even connected me with Brett at Mill City Cycles, a local wheel-builder who was proficient in working with vintage bikes. They saved me from making a whole lot of time-consuming costly mistakes.
I disassembled the original wheels, cleaned off the hubs, and dropped them off at Mill City Cycles, along with all of the new parts Brett needed to build the wheels. To add a bit of a custom, vintage look I chose black spoke nipples (yep, that’s what they’re called ---I guess it's better than spoke teats), polished aluminum rims and stainless steel spokes. I also needed to buy one-hundred, nearly microscopic, brass washers that needed to be placed on the end of each spoke.
I couldn’t be happier with how it all came together. The Raleigh rides so much better and actually stops in a reasonable amount of time now. As you can see, Brett did a fabulous job. It’s hard to believe those hubs are sixty-one years old.
Here's the finished product. Now I can concentrate on riding instead of worrying if I can stop if someone swerves in front of me. I sure do hope the crypto market does some amazing things before the next spring upgrade.
When I bought this old, beat up bike in 2012 I had no idea what a powerful and rewarding addiction it would become. I also had no idea it would be such a gateway to so many good friends. If you need new friends all you have to do is buy a vintage Raleigh.
Happy Memorial Day!
~Eric Vance Walton~
*I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and crypto-enthusiast. If you’ve enjoyed my work please sign up for my author newsletter at my website. Newsletter subscribers will receive exclusive updates and special offers and your information will never be sold or shared.
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