1994 Raleigh SPD 531c Restomod

A Plan Goes South...

The plan was actually just to buy a classic steel bike and tinker with it; scratch an itch if you will. The problems started when I saw the bike at the top of this page on a well known auction site, the name of which begins with 'e' and ends with 'Bay'.

Of course I was looking for a Raleigh and dared to dream of one in Team-TI colours, but anything that wasn't a complete shed or hack was attracting dangerous money for what were really, just off the peg frames.

In May 2019, the one that caught my eye was advertised as some Reynolds 531 framed standard model or other, which a cursory Google showed to be unlikely. The model in question was standard 531, had mudguard lugs, a brake cable that ran over the top tube and frame pump lugs beneath it, all not present in the photos. The thing was, Shimano 600 7-spd groupset, Miche chainset, 3t stem and bars, plus Mavic rimmed, Shimano hubbed rear wheel were consistent with a decent spec (1990s) bike. Chromed forks aren't cheap, but the rattle-can paint job could be hiding something. The front wheel and seat/stem were easily explained by typical London theft. The pictures were plentiful and of good quality, but it was still going to be a bit of a leap of faith.

But what I couldn't stop looking at were the proportions. The near parallel head and seat tubes as part of a 23" frame just looked absolutely spot on. As pretty a frame as I've ever seen, although I accept this is a subjective judgement. The buyer wanted £160 collected and I bought it cash on collection, making sure collection was from his home address. If it smelled dodgy, I'd burned an evening, nothing more. Merely lifting it off the ground cleared up weather this was a gas-pipe frame or something more; or should I say less. It felt light and it eyeballed straight. Good enough.

Once home, it was a sweet, if dated ride. Quite a sporty position by modern sportive frame standards - low, but not too stretched - nimble handling without being twitchy, smooth and surprisingly easy to keep at speed once you get there. I'd forgotten how steel seems to absorb big inputs, but the natural spring seems to have an assisting rhythm once you settle down. I even notched up a couple of Strava silvers and a gold on that club ride, without really intending to, or feeling like I was trying that hard. Okay, I was gunning it on the gold and it did near kill me...

The rear dropouts had Raleigh on them, backing up the provenance of the head badge. Upending the bike, showed a bottom bracket serial number - E43191. Consulting the interweb threw up the font of all things Raleigh at https://raleigh-sb4059.com/ and further comments from that sites owner on the UK forums removed all doubt.

The frame is a hand built 531 Competition from 1994 out of the Raleigh Special Products Division. The SPD was the twilight years of the formerly world road racing dominant Special Bikes Development Unit (SBDU). Essentially, it was all the expertise and skill of the race workshop of the '80s, into a research and customer custom build unit, strangled by bean counters who didn't know what to do with it. Raleigh as a truly British company would die not many years hence.

So; a quality tubeset with immaculate welding, handbuilt and worth well in excess of the bike that it rested in. The plan to just tinker and ride was about to bite the dust, because this frame deserved more.

Plan II

A frame that is late eighties and onward has modern spacings. A 2020 road wheel and skewer will drop right in, there's space for lots of gears (more on this later) and stems, seat tubes, bearings, etc from the modern world will all fit.

I reasoned (to myself, so not much resistance on that front) that buying a bit here, a paint job there, and a wheel or two as and when, would make for an affordable project over the winter months. Thus, I decided that I would post-modern (restomod in car parlance) a classic bike into a machine that would pay homage to yesteryear, but be very much a modern, usable tool. I would clean and restore the classic components that still worked and add the rest, carefully selecting nice bits from here and there at a modest outlay.

Wrong.

The head bearings were tired, the bars too narrow with massive drops, the bar stem bolt seized, cap-head bolts knackered and rounded. The calipers were sloppy and the rear wheel too old to take modern gears. The chainset and cranks were surprisingly unworn, but the square taper bottom bracket was noisy. The saddle and seat stem were cheap and out of place.

The original (as in came with the donor bike) parts other than the frame and forks that survive to ride again are the seat stem bolt and the bottle cage.

Plan III - Give in!

Groupset

If you have read my cycling front page you know I dreamed Team-TI as kid, but I also dreamed Campagnolo. I don't care how functionally perfect and efficient other stuff is (I have SRAM Rival 22, Shimano 105 & Ultegra Di2 on other bikes) the fact is, nobody shapes metal like an Italian. You nod at Dura Ace but you run your fingers over Campagnolo. Metal barrel adjusters that metal click-detent make no difference when you're pedaling the thing, but imbue a component with passion devoid elsewhere in the market. You also don't see many Campag bikes, so that's nice too.

At this point, fate intervened because even Campy has also succumbed to the bloody ugly four-arm, jelly mold chainset, so my choice meant hunting down a recent but all metal five arm spider groupo and the now defunct Veloce fitted the bill. Budget (by Campag standards) when new, a new-old-stock groupset including derailleurs, brakes, chainset, cassette, levers, chain and bottom bracket still weighed in just shy of £500. Modern 105 money, but it stopped me spending more.

Frame.

Time to shift attention to the frame. I'd Pinterested myself half to death with inspirational pictures, but there really was only one candidate. That said, there were still interesting details that captured my attention.

Team-TI Raleigh was a shoe-in, but there was still a variation to be had on different levels of frame back in the day. Indeed, there were decal changes from one year to the next to be concerned with, if a historically accurate replica is your goal. The forks of the donor bike were also already chrome and I really like this.

I visited the websites of various paint & repair shops and asked around on the forums for first hand feedback. A few names kept cropping up with universal approval for quality and service. From the shortlist, I picked Bob Jackson Cycles in Yorkshire, because I found it easiest to discern what cost what on their web price list. Lead time was quoted at about 12 weeks, but by now it was October 2019 and so there was no rush to be ready for winter.

In the end, I decided on this, more-or-less:

Chrome for the forks, drive side chainstay and dropouts near doubled the price of the paint, but I was only going to do this once (ask me again in ten years!) so I didn't want any 'if only I had...' moments. Yellow coach lining around the frame lugs is not something I've seen on a TI colour scheme, but when keyed to a colour already in the scheme, looks expensive (it's not - £30) without seeming too 'busy'. Finally, I wanted the seat tube entirely black. I've seen other bikes like this and think it looks great. Half of the seat tube is black decal anyway, so I'm not falling too far from the tree and it compliments the all-black steerer tube.

That didn't stop Bob Jackson Cycles from offering up "Are you sure?" to which I replied "No, but I've made my mind up". To be fair to a shop that has painted a lot of requests and come up with a few classics of their own, when they rang up to say it was ready and extract money from me, the exact phrase was "It looks bloody lovely actually". They weren't wrong. £504 - The single biggest outlay on the bike.

They weren't wrong. You picture things in your minds eye, cross your fingers and rely on the expertise of someone else to make tweeks based on their experience. For instance, I thought the downtube decal looked too high, but with a chainset and derailleur in place, it's perfect. The deep lacquer sealing in the decals is blemish free and liquid gloss. The pitting of the forks is gone and the chrome is absolutely smooth bright and clear. Brand new stainless steel bottle cage screws and rear drop-out adjusters appeared without asking, or showing up on the bill - A really nice touch. A total hats off to Bob Jackson and all who work there.

Wheels

Whilst keeping to a broadly retro look places restrictions, we live in times where practically anything is available of you look hard enough. I wanted polished aluminium rims and because I always liked the look, large flange hubs. A slightly deeper rim than was less than common (but about) in the early nineties would be nice. Indeed all perfectly possible if you approach your local wheelbuilder with deep enough pockets.

A chance passing visit to Townsends Light Blue Cycle Centre in my home town of Cambridge unexpectedly answered my prayers. As well as a few carefully chosen not-quite-mainstream brands, they manufacture their own - The Light Blue (Light blue being the sporting livery of The University of Cambridge) range of bikes via the now trusted model of spec'd manufacture of frames in the far east, assembly carried out locally. They are owned by Ison Distribution and many of the brands they handle, populate the parts of the Light Blue bikes. One of those brands is Halo, better known for MTB stuff, but there on display in the shop on the The Light Blue Kings Retro was the answer - Halo Retro wheels.

At £280 for a pair with a Campag compatible freehub, it was game over. 32 spoke 3-cross, double butted spokes with brass nipples and rim inserts, running on large flange hubs, with very discrete laser etched logos and a very quiet freewheel was suitably authentic retro. As is the 15mm internal rim width, but a ballooned up 28mm tyre ain't gonna fit the rear of a '90s frame, so 25mm is just peachy. I added the matching Retro Skewers to the basket at £20, which was hardly extravagant.

All the other bits - AKA, where the costs mount up.

So, I have the major components, but nothing to string it all together. I can't sit on it, steer or pedal it. I can't even put the forks in. If you've ever built a house, you'll know that when you have the major bones in place, with the rain and wind firmly sealed on the outside, you're only halfway there. It's in the detail and unexpected where the costs mount up. I was £1550 deep at this point and I wasn't going to spoil it for a ha'porth of tar.

Thing is, there's quite a lot you can spend on tools as an example. A whole bikes worth in fact. I decided some time ago that whilst I'd spend on tools that would get repeated, running maintenance use (pedal spanner, cassette removal tools, derailleur hanger alignment tool, etc) unless it cost less than £50 and would get used more than once a year, I'd pay someone else to do it. Lazy? Cheapskate? I don't think so.

You can get a head bearing extractor for £30, but not a good one. You can get a GXP/Power Torque socket for a few quid less. All of the times I'd actually need one, a fully trained independent mechanic can apply them expertly in a fully equipped workshop during a full yearly gold service for £90, plus parts. That includes truing/tensioning of wheels, bearing disassembly and lube and all of the other nadgery bits you don't do weekly. If it goes wrong, the cost is on him and he knows me and my bikes, plus I'm lining his pocket directly - Not some multi-branch chain.

Terry at Cymech in Colne, Cambs is my man and he's not the last one to be involved in this build. One of his bikes is Campag, so he had the relevant stuff for the bottom bracket. He chased out the BB threads to ensure a clean install and job done. £25. We thought the Campag Competition headset (£44) would fit so that would get done at the same time for a few pence extra.

No. For some reason the no-name headset that got binned prior to the paint, held a secret. Namely that the crown race seat on my fork was not a standard size for a 1" steerer, despite everything else about the frame being straight down the middle of the line.

That area above the fork crown is the problem. It is 1/32" too large, for a Campag Competition headset. The tool that cuts and resizes this face is £300+ and many shops farm this work out to the bloke that has one. When a shop says " you'll have to leave it with us for a couple of days", that's because they know who this bloke is and he doesn't work there.

I found Malcolm Borg of The Cycle Clinic (time trial nut, wheel builder extraordinaire and Campag savant of all eras) with a lot of in-depth web searching. He doesn't really advertise, but having a webshop prevents him from being totally underground. I rang him, cheekily asking if he could do anything on Saturday a couple of days hence and got a 'yes'. No appointment, so I just turned up in hope (him having beaten my there by about thirty seconds, on his bike, in filthy weather) expecting to pick it all up the following weekend. He's thirty miles from me in a gorgeous part of Suffolk and quality workmanship is normally busy, so that would have been fine.

There and then upon my arrival, he refaced the crown race seat, extracted the headset cups, refaced the head tube exactly square, assembled the fork and bearings and because he could, chased out the threads on the downtube shifter bosses. I left with a complete Campag cable set (expected, because I needed it) and Campag Record Chain (Not expected as I had a Veloce one. Argue about anything else - Campag Record chains are the best) for £120 including over an hour of labour. I'd have paid that just to make the frame functional at this point, so consider me well chuffed.

Finally, I have something I can start to assemble.

Stuff I haven't mentioned

Lots of it, all needed and culled from a wide variety of sources.

Bicycle Ambulance in Cambridge is another small independent that's found its niche. Stocking a lot of stuff for the fixie boys initially, their scope has broadened and they actually stock real stock, as in more than one of things. In different sizes. too. The stuff of interest to me is Nitto, a Japanese manufacturer of quality components that replace (copy) the classics without sacrificing quality, the look and crucially, breaking the bank.

The NY-3 Stem may be a shameless copy of the 3ttt I have, but at £29 it was half the price of the scuffed real things offered second hand. Available in multiple lengths. I plumped for 100mm as it was a middle of the road place to start.

The Nitto Neat Mod.185 handlebar doesn't copy anything I can remember (which is increasingly less these days!) but at £43 and featuring an engraved sleeve for the stem to clamp, captures a style long gone, but in a bar with a more modern, comfort friendly shape. Pushing 50, I can reach drops this shallow.

Some f:izi:k handle bar tape for about £20 was had too because the colour matched the saddle (Velominati Rule #8) but I don't like it. It wrapped weird, isn't sticky enough and lacks padding. It will do for now.

Other stuff:

Ritchey Classic Seatpost. It's Ritchey, fits, looks great, is finished by Ritchey and has a really easy saddle mount and adjustment. £38 new from somewhere on the internet.

Brooks Swallow Saddle. According to the Arse-o-meters in bike shops, my sit bones are and I quote, "normal for a woman". Needing a wider saddle narrows choice and having seen the Swallow with it's broad flat transverse profile, it had a lot in common with my Specialized Romin Evo Pro on my KTM. I don't know if it's comfortable, because it hasn't had 500 miles to run my butt in as of yet - Brooks are a commitment apparently. I'll find out if they're lying later, but it compliments the bike oh-so-well. I did break my golden rule of buying from LBS when I could get it for £85 on eBay, rather than £150. Sorry.

Campagnolo downtube adaptors/adjusters. Another area where it's possible to go nuts in search of period authenticity, but at £18 brand new, these are Campag and therefore, enough.

Challenge Elite Pro 25mm tyres and Challenge Latex Tubes. £72 & £28 per pair respectively. I'll admit, I was hitting the Vino when it came to spending £14ea on an inner tube, but like the tyres, there was was some prior experience here.

When I bought the KTM, it was one of the very first bikes you could buy 'tubeless ready' It was so tubeless ready it had tubeless valves in the owners pack and came with Schwalbe One Pro 1 'tubeless ready' tyres as standard on 'tubeless ready' DT SWiss DB23 Spline wheels. And inner tubes. About 11 minutes later and full of Stan's gunk off I rolled. If you haven't rolled tubeless, then let me tell you it's all true. Ride quality is sublime even if you don't drop the pressure and if you do (5-10psi) then there's enough grip to climb walls.

However, this was 2016. Stan's gunk was MTB stuff and made for sub 40psi tractor tyres. Road tubeless tyres were only available in top-end, light sports/racing rubber. Out here on The Fen Edge with Farmer Palmer dragging flinty soil all over the roads, punctures are cuts, not simple piercing thorns. As such everything about tubeless was true except the bit about self sealing. Being covered in sticky white stuff, whilst smelling of ammonia and fitting the fall-back tube you carried was more like it.

But that ride quality and grip was legend. So, I looked for a tubed solution that approached that quality. The 260tpi hand made (Italian) Challenges got fitted, did not puncture as much and simultaneously provided some tan wall colour relief on a bike that was multiple shades of black. But they were cut up to buggery in 500 miles (just over a month) so other hoops were sought - I ride all year round - but not forgotten and for this bike and it's sunniest days only use, perfect.

I will add that I have tried tubeless again with the latest Hutchinsons and the new wave or road bike sealants and the promise is finally delivered. I recently got three punctures during a mid-winter fifty miler about five miles into the ride and it was five miles from home before I decided the rims needed the insurance of a quick CO2 blast. I hadn't had one puncture in the six months prior to that, or at least I hadn't noticed one. Finally, tubeless works.

Cable ferrules, etc. £10.

Stuff you didn't expect/foresee.

Well, the expense of the head race bearing fits here, but is already covered. However, it turns out that just because the cassette fits the wheel and the wheel fits the frame, it does not follow that the cassette fits the frame.

The cassette (there was a choice) that I selected with the groupo was 13-30. I seemed a nice balance of a climbing gear (there is no 32) that a fat lad might appreciate, with a 13t that might spin out down-hill, but closed up the 10 ratios a bit when on the flat.

However, the frame comes from a time of seven speeds that had ample space in the frames of the time. The seat stays of that time, did not forsee 10spd cassettes occupying every single available millimetre and whilst the chain runs free in the 13t and 14 sprockets, it has to leap up and out to change from one to the other. This hits the bottom of the seat stays where they are brazed to the dropouts.

Now, if the two smallest sprockets are 11 & 12t, you buy just enough room, but Veloce does not have a suitable 11t option. Indeed the options available seem weird. Google 'Campagnolo Veloce 10 speed cassette' and try and pick the one that would best approximate your ten or eleven speed Shimano/SRAM. 12 or 13t t is the standard with 11 only available if your bail out gear is 25t. It might have been 20 years ago, but not for me now. Shimano spoil us.

So, we look to others which in Campag World means Miche and they make absolutely everything. Unless you're in the UK, where the selection is scarcely less bizarre than Campag. Their website lists just over a squillion different combinations but in the UK, the importer has settled on a selection of six that best approximate the inadequate Campag offering at a saving of 50p.

Luckily, I'm used to trawling the EU websites where the lack of borders mean you get the full selection, but may pay a bit more on carriage - let's see how that develops post Brexit! 11-28 in the basket and 5-6 days away for £50 all in. The unused 13-30 Veloce cassette recouped £32 on eBay .

Stuff you didn't budget for total:

£537. Could it be done cheaper? Obviously, yes. Would you when you're now in love...

Running total:

£2001. Gulp! That's actually £1 more than I paid for the ex-press demo KTM and that has Di2! The KTM has over 8000 miles on it, is on it's second pair of wheels and I haven't even slung a leg over the Raleigh at this point. Am I mad?

Rubber Meets the Road

The first ride on any bike you have built yourself is anything but. If you have any sense, you'll at least have a well appointed multi-tool in your jersey pocket, some common spanners too depending upon vintage.

You can set up everything by known measurements from other bikes where they might work, but ultimately once you're on it you find out what works and what doesn't, so the first ride is punctuated with frequent stops to tighten this or adjust that. I'll spare you the exact details, but most of it involved saddles, handlebars and indexing - A self-perpetuating problem that never existed before indexing was invented and wasn't killed off until Di2.

What's it like?

Much like the pre-restoration ride at the top of this page; smooth, stable, low and very, very quiet. This is by comparison to modern tackle, my boyhood experiences of steen long since having evaporated.

Sitting on the tops does feel low compared to modern sportive machinery, but as the reach isn't excessive, relaxed bent arms mean it's comfortable. You just don't reach for the drops as often.

Handling seems nimble enough at low speed, but very planted and stable through down-hill corners. I don't understand why modern sportive machinery needs to feel like it's ready for a crit. 99% of people don't do that. This is a short bike comparatively speaking, but the geometry just feels very natural. What I do have to be careful of (mainly because I think my disk bikes are that bit longer) is be careful of toes overlapping the front wheel in slow turns.

It still doesn't take off like a stabbed rat when you stamp on it, so you build up speed and maintain it. Standing up for hills seems similarly unrewarding, but with a greater selection and range of gearing, you just sit up and spin to the top. On the flat, it bowls along as well as anything else in the garage, which is what composes most of a ride if you're honest.

It is smooth though and makes you realise how many decades have been spent by manufacturers trying to claw back the ride quality they gave up in adopting 'modern' materials. I think this is also emphasised by the absence of noise from the bike. Carbon and to a lesser extent aluminium, amplify road noise, every rattle and through in a few additional creaks for good measure. It's just you, the gentle whir of the derailleur and the wind in your ears.

It's not a factor of the frame, but the freewheel of the Hope wheels is a gentle buzz, not the chainsaw cackle that seems to render a bell redundant in announcing your approach. Is it just me or does it get louder the more you spend on wheels?

The brakes seem ample and immediate, the non-woven Campagnolo cable apparently canceling any chance of sponginess at the lever. They do squeal a bit, but we'll see how the rims and blocks bed into each other over time.

Likewise, we'll see if it's the Brooks saddle or my butt that beds in first. It does seems a bit harsh on the sit bones (I'm wearing Endura Pro-SL bib-shorts with the wide chamois) but again it's early days and I'm damned if I'm going to bugger up the aesthetics merely for comfort. Yet.

Basically, I love it. It delivers in a way I scarcely dared hope, but it has left me with a problem; namely that I now need to look for a cheap steel frame/bike as a daily rider/town bike - something that is pleasant to ride, but I'm not scared to leave in locked up in town. Oh! And it's only fair that my better half should have one of her own. Back to classifieds and so much for asking me again in ten years already....