Raleigh Twenty on a train

Well, she's not as small as a Dahon and nowhere near the compactness of a Brompton. Here, I haven't dropped the handlebars, or seatpost, so the folded package could be smaller than in the photo. Definitely useable, but not in a busy train I'd suggest. Fairly easy to fit inside the boot of an average car - I have managed to pack both a Dahon Speed D7 folding bike and this Triumph Twenty into the boot of an estate car, without the rear seats folded and with quite a lot of space to spare. This photo was taken before I'd changed the pedals and serviced the bottom bracket.

Renovating a Raleigh Twenty: Part 4 - Bottom Bracket

I was intending to service the bottom bracket and change the chain today, but was stumped by the fact that the old chain had 93 links. That's possible because of this half link with cranked plates - photo of the old chain above. I don't have a replacement, so had to order one. Anyway...on with the bottom bracket for now.

Above is a photo of the bottom bracket with the retaining ring removed. The cotter pins came out with no difficulties, thankfully, but I'll need new pins when I re-assemble.

Here's the axle cleaned up, with shiny new 1/4" balls, 11 each side. Cups were in reasonable condition and although the axle has bearing wear, it's good to go for a while yet.

I forgot to take a photo of what was inside the bottom bracket shell when I opened it. It was dry, balls were all present, but there were flakes of rust scattered around, mainly over the middle of the axle inside the shell. The photo above is after I'd cleaned it and packed the chainwheel side cup with ball bearings and grease. (The chain wheel side cup is welded in place). Looking inside, you can see that the shell itself is absolutely fine, the steel is in great condition actually. So, the flakes of rust must have fallen through from the seat tube opening - at the top of the cylinder. So, the frame saver that I squirted down the seat tube was needed! I decided to make a sleeve, in the good old fashioned way from a washing up liquid bottle.

Thing is, that nowadays, washing up liquid is not sold in cylindrical bottles any more! So, here's some transparent plastic taken from a bottle of some potion, nabbed from da boss's toiletries collection.

After a bit of snipping with scissors, in goes the sleeve. It butts conveniently against the lip of the chain wheel side cup. The ends overlap at the bottom, in case any water gets in there, it has a way out.

Here you can see the sleeve after being trimmed to size and in position. The outer edge is just inside the thread on the shell.

After screwing in the cup, I gave all the stay tubes a few squirts of frame saver. I've been doing that as I work round the frame, and the only tube that still needs some frame saver is the big chunky down tube.

On eBay, you can buy these cheepo plastic pipettes for pennies. These are great for all sorts of uses round the house, including squirting engine oil into the Sturmey Archer AW hub!

Next time I'll assemble the cottered cranks and fit the new chain. By the way, on close inspection, the chain wheel was not totally straight. Clearly it had been knocked from the side at some point in history. Actually, I had not noticed until now. A couple of whacks with a hammer, and the chain wheel was much straighter! That's the beauty of steel...

Raleigh Twenty Links

Here are some of my favourite sites about the Raleigh Twenty:

1. Fabulous Raleigh Twenty to Life site.

2. Sheldon Brown's pages which I am sure are responsible for causing a number people to develop Raleigh Twenty addictions!

3. The history of the Twenty by Tony Hadland.

4. A super site by Hartley Martin collecting information from many Raleigh Twenty owners round the world.

Renovating a Raleigh Twenty: Part 3 - Progress Update

So here is a photo of where I've reached so far. She's ready to roll. For comparison, below is how she looked when I bought her.

So far, I've done the following:

1. Cost of bike: £10
2. Remove kickstand and chainguard
3. Washed her. Removed down tube and seat tube labels. I'm still rubbing off the gummy sticker backing. It comes off with meths and elbow grease - doing it bit by bit
4. New gear cable and indicator protector cap: £5
5. Adjusted gear cable and lubed hub for smooth shifting
6. Dismantled forks and headset, spray frame saver inside forks, steerer and head tube
7. Serviced headset, with fresh ball bearings: £1
8. Changed pedals (I had some in my parts box)
9. Replace front rim and serviced hub: £18
10. New tyres front and back: £20
11. Alloy seat tube (the saddle is one I had lying around): £10
12. New rear brake cable: £5
13. Cleaned front brake cable and fitted new Dia Compe dual pivot calipers (photo below): £12

She's now a real pleasure to ride. Weight has reduced by 1.1kg so far (is currently ~14kg including the rack and pedals). Front braking is very good now and the back brake is satisfactory too. My 8 year old son and my wife love just riding about for the sake of it.

To dos:

1. Rear rim replacement
2. New rear brake
3. Strip and service bottom bracket
4. New chain

Still not sure about replacing the handlebars - they feel so chrome cruiser cool!

Renovating a Raleigh Twenty: Part 2 - Replacing a Bicycle Rim

This is a sequence of photos to show how to replace a rim. Old wheel, new rim a Sun ICI-1 alloy job, some basic tools and some engine oil. The rim is 451 diameter - that's about 21" and is bigger than the normal folding bike 20" which are usually 406. The upside is that pedal clearance stays as original, and being tall, I like the bigger wheels. The downside is that tyre choice is limited.

After removing the tyre and tape, this is what I saw! A rotting rim - definitely dangerous. I wondered whether it was possible to re-use the nipples though. Liberal spray of WD40 to loosen things up.


Quite rusty nipple heads. So, out came the wire brush....


And the wire brush worked wonders. As you can see, I've loosened all the nipples now, so that the spokes are not under tension and I know that each nipple unscrews.

Now using masking tape, fix the new rim next to the existing one, like the photo above.


Tape it up, new rim to old, in a few more places.


Start off by transferring the spokes that are nearest to the new rim. In this case, 28h, that means every other spoke.


After that, start transferring the other spokes. Here at the top left, you can see the first spoke transferred over to the new rim.

All spokes now transferred over. It's now laced up. Cut the tape off and tighten up all spokes so that the tension is even all round. You can use a spoke nipple initial setting tool for that. I don't have one, so I just used a screwdriver to bring the spokes up so that they were level with the bottom of the slot in each nipple. Then felt them all by hand and adjusted by feel. That was how I set the initial tension. It's really important to get that starting point right, because it helps to ensure that the rest of the tightening up procedure goes smoothly.

Before starting to tension the wheel up in earnest, it was time to dismantle the hub. The ball bearings were bone dry, but they were all there and in pretty good condition.

So this is the hub dismantled. A simple and quite well made design, I reckon. One cone moves, the other screws down to a bedding ridge on the axle. The cups were really dirty.

I've cleaned up the cups and all the parts, ready for greasing and re-assembly.


Assembled. All I need to do now is wipe off the grease outside the hubs, put the wheel in my truing stand and tighten it up progressively and steadily.

Here is my truing stand! The stool is to sit on. It's a pleasant and relaxing job, I find. I start off with whole turns on each spoke, then spring the spokes by hand (wearing leather gloves helps for that), and check for hop and wobble. If either are present, remove them. I try to work out why the hop or wobble exists - at early stages, it's normally that one or two spokes are too tight or loose. The idea is to get them all even tension and the rim nice and circular. So after some full turns, then I move to half turns, and finally quarter turns on every spoke.

I use the brake pads as a guide for working out where the wheel needs some work.

The finished wheel, shod and ready for fitting to the bike. The whole sequence above took me about 2 hours in total. It went very smoothly and is incredibly satisfying to build an smooth running wheel that is fast and true. I've now made four wheels in total over the years (two involved lacing up from the start and the other two were rim replacements). This was the easiest and the best yet!

The original steel rim weighed 550g, while the new alloy rim was 320g. That means I saved 230g just by replacing the rim! That's the same weight as a packet of butter rotating around the perimeter of the wheel.

Renovating a Raleigh Twenty: Part 1 - The Bike

The Raleigh 20: An Icon from Nottingham. To me, she is like a lump of clay waiting for an artist! Transforming her into a sculpture, the artist's imagination can run wild! You can find a lot of information about the history of these geeky looking bikes via a Google search. Raleigh churned them out in massive numbers and under various brand labels.

This one is actually a Triumph Traffic Master 20. The frame number and serial number on the three speed Sturmey Archer hub indicate that she was made in 1978. I picked her up for £10 via eBay.

There was no gear cable and no cover on the trigger lever. Lovely chrome handlebars.

Here you can see the rear hub. The Sturmey Archer AW hub was really dusty and when I rubbed it with a finger, there was a satisfying gleam of chrome from the "tin can." Missing gear cable and the indicator toggle is hanging free. Steel rims, so that means poor braking AND acceleration!

Steel sidepull caliper brakes front (shown) and rear. When applied, they rock like a punk doing the pogo.

The back brake is a bit better than the front, even though it has really long reach (~80mm!). That chain guard has got to go!


Good old steel cottered cranks. This is a Raleigh proprietary threaded bottom bracket, so won't be easy to replace with something modern. On the plus side, the bottom bracket seems to be working ok and there's no play. So I think a strip, new bearings and regrease should be adequate.

Chainwheel teeth are not too worn, which is another good reason to keep the crankset. The chain has stretched though, so a new one will be needed.

Headset has standard balls at the bottom, but a nylon bushing instead of a ball race at the top. Hmm, very interesting.

Forks seem to be straight and decent enough. There's a Schwalbe tyre on the front!

Close up of the front hub. I bet that hasn't seen grease for a decade! Note how the mudguard eyes fit over the hub axle. This works because of the hub cone design.

Seat tube is far too short for me.

Well, there you have it. For a tenner, I have a bike that rides. First impressions are that the frame feels solid and she has a lovely feel on the road. The steel rims are definitely impairing performance. Basically, she needs to lose weight and get serviced all round. The big questions in my mind are:

(a) Is she going to get treated to a loverly fresh, new, powder coat?

(b) I really like those sweeping handlebars, so do I really want to ditch them for modern alloy ones?

(c) Do I try to lose the nylon bushing on the upper headset and replace it with ball races?

Questions, questions...