Raleigh Twenty Project: Latest renovation finished, BSA 20

Finally finished! Here are photos of the bike I've been renovating. Remember the rust was mainly on the mudguards (fenders) and chainguard, so I had those powder coated Light Ivory, RAL 1015 by a local business. Chose that colour because I thought it would make a great retro-looking contrast to the traditional Raleigh "bronze green" paintwork.

Carradice roll saddlebag. Also, I think it's fun and ironic to use a modern Dahon folding bike saddle. Actually the main reason was the tall distance between rail and saddle top.  

And yes, that is a GOLD chain, KMC 510s with a "snap on" connecter and stepped half link. For anyone who doesn't follow what I mean here, a normal chain can only be an even number of links long. The Raleigh Twenty chain, as far as I've seen them, tends to be 93 links long, which means you need a stepped half link. This diagram should explain it all:

No. 2 in the top sketch is the stepped half link. No. 1 in both sketches is the joining link, in this case a "snap on" type.  You should always put the wider part of the stepped half link forward on the top run of the chain. In other words, the top sketch above, is a view from above on the bike, with chainwheel to the right and the rear sprocket to the left. 

It feels elegant to ride and is a pleasant way to get around (SANS LYCRA!) 

Sturmey Archer 3 Speed Shifter: Make a new Cover Plate

It's common for the cover plate on the ubiquitous Sturmey Archer shifter to fall off and disappear. It leaves behind a sticky mess on the plastic top like this:

I find it easiest to remove the goo with a bit of paraffin on a rag, then wash up with soapy water, and dry, leaving a clean plastic top:

From this, you need to make a suitable replacement cover plate. If I had some tracing paper, that would probably work, but I didn't so instead used a bit of water paint to stamp the shape on to paper:

Cut this out carefully, trimming so that it fits nicely in within the raised border of the plastic cap:

Use the paper template to cut out a replacement cover plate out of a suitable material. In this case, I decided to go for 1.5mm thick birch ply, because I had some handy:

 After some deft scissor and sandpaper work, you end up with this:

Which I then brushed with 2 coats of clear varnish, wrote on the numbers and gave it another coat of varnish. Turned it over and applied some double sided sticky tape to the underside:

And finally, below a pic of the finished item on the bike. Obviously, one can take as much time as one likes on this kind of thing. I also removed the rust from the round head bolt that fixes it down. Now I can't help imagining a tortoiseshell or mother of pearl cover plate...

Raleigh Twenty handlebar grips

The standard Raleigh Twenty hand grips are plastic, yellowing and uncomfortable. They are also stuck on very strongly. To remove, I first tried heating with a hair dryer, but it did nothing. As I've never removed these before, I wanted to see if they are notched internally or anything odd like that. So, I hacksawed off the plastic end and there was nothing unusual inside - just plain tubing. 

Which means that the grips are merely glued on. I was going to use a knife to cut them off, when I "found" in my tool bag a long forgotten sharpened screwdriver. I can't remember why I made this exactly, but it's basically a chisel, made from a screwdriver. Using a mallet for control, I cut gently:

You don't have to cut much further than in the photo above, but for fun, I did:

They twist off really easily now of course! So, what will I be replacing them with? There is an issue in that there's not much space before you reach the bend on these handlebars. Which means that you cannot really have standard 130mm hand grips with the original brake levers. Although, the yukky plastic grips are 100mm in length, that's end to end. Measured internally, they cover only 90mm of of the bar! Luckily, there are are relatively cheap and good quality BMX racing style grips that are 100mm overall with twin lock-on clamps:

I chose these from Spank called the Spoon Grom. The anodised green clamps match reasonably well with the bike frame. They are way more comfortable than the originals, will function fine with these brake levers and should look smart too. 

Since the above photos, I've removed whatever rust I could, serviced the brake calipers, cables, and levers, and all chrome parts have been polished. The bike is pretty much ready to rebuild. I'm just waiting for the mudguards and chainguard to come back from the powder coaters. I also want to change the chain, add saddlebag loops to the saddle for a traditional saddle bag, and make a cover plate for the Sturmey Archer trigger shifter to show gear positions.   

Fitting Shimano Di2 Electronic Ultegra gears to a Lynskey Titanium frame

 At the opposite extreme to a 1978 Raleigh shopper, is this swanky thang from Tennessee:

It's a Lynskey R300 road bike, to which I'm going to fit Shimano Di2 Ultegra (6870, so an older version of the groupset, but it's still totally brilliant!). Now, the challenge is that at each bulkhead in the frame, the passage holes are smaller than the tubing. That means, there's a lip around each junction, which makes it awkward to thread anything through. The photo below of the bottom bracket may show this better than my explanation:

There are 6mm exit holes, but these are ok to work with, and standard for Shimano grommets. Here's the one in the head tube (and yes, Lynskey did confirm that the electronic wire (connecting Junction boxes A to B) is intended to go in from this hole around the steerer and into the down tube:

And here's the hole on the chainstay, which I will be wiring up first:

My "threading" wire of choice is an old gear cable, also shown in the photo above. I like using this, as it can be taped easily to the electronic wire plug and still fit in the 6mm hole and pass round tight corners. I'll show you how later. But, the first step is to get this gear cable into the chainstay, with the nipple at the cassette end.  After thinking about it, I fashioned a hooky type tool out of wire:

One end is a shepherd's crook, the other is a simple L hook and the middle is a loop. So, I ended up using this tool quite a lot today! First job then is to use the shepherd's crook to lift out through the chainstay hole the non-nipple end of a gear cable, inserted into the bottom bracket, like this:

Eagle-eyed readers will see that I snipped off the very end of the sherpherd's crook, to make it easier to pull out of the 6mm hole. Basically, it's like fishing - poke the gear cable with one hand, try to hook it out with the left. It's relatively easy because you can feel the gear cable touch the hook and you can sometimes see it through the hole too. Once that was done, attach the nipple end of another gear cable to the nipple end of this cable. Using masking tape, wrap them up: 

And pull the nipple end through, to end up like this:

Now we're cooking! This nipple end can then be taped to the electrical wire plug:

To create a hinged affair that can fit in a 6mm hole and go around corners. It looks like this:

Which can then be carefully drawn into the chainstay and out of the bottom bracket:

In the photo above, the first electrical wire is installed. A similar technique is used for the head tube - down tube connection. Looking in under the head tube, you can see the gear cable inserted into the entry hole for the down tube:

The gear cable comes out of the BB to the junction box:

The wires going from the seatpost battery to the bottom bracket, and the front mech to the bottom bracket are much easier. And from here, it is quite fiddly to get all your electrical wires where you want them AND to insert the junction box into the down tube, leaving enough space for the bottom bracket itself to be installed. By the way, for this Lynskey recommends copper ease anti-seize and also to PTFE tape the threads on the bottom bracket bearing units. Certainly, I took my time, used lots of patience and avoided frustration by thinking carefully about every step before executing it. 

It shifts like a dream and rides like a magic carpet! Here are some photos of it (I'll cut the steerer down later, after I've settled in on a riding position).

Chuck's Tech Opinion: How to decide what to keep and what to change on a Raleigh Twenty, and Pedals!

As you work on a Twenty, you start to get a feel of the engineering. I find it useful to categorise: some parts are really well thought out and function well, others are merely adequate for their job and there's another category of redundant, useless, or poorly designed stuff. Then layered over that, some parts have elegance, possibly even beauty, while others are downright ugly. Add yet a further layer, namely weight, and a recipe emerges as to how to go about deciding what to keep and what to change. 

Take the pedals. In the photo below (starting top left and going anti-clockwise): originals off a BSA 20, modern MTB style polymer flatties (BBB brand) and a generic polymer trap-type pedal:

Both the modern pedals have reflectors, today a legal requirement for safety, whereas the R20 pedals do not. Now, this R20 pedal has a certain elegance, it's true, but it's also narrow. Uncomfortable over a length of time, especially in soft soled shoes, as your feet curl over it. The weights add another factor:

Pedal type	g per pair
R20	651
MTB Flatties	336
Polymer Cage	286

I think it's remarkable that the old R20 pedals weigh so much, nearly 1.5lb! I discarded the polymer cage, for two reasons: the bearings on one were notchy and I didn't like the style for this bike. I thought it would be funky to have the MTB flatties. Apart from the beautiful wide platform they provide, the reflectors for safety and the weight saving (a stonking 315g), they are also shorter (12.1 cm v 11.0 cm from crank to pedal tip) and thinner, both of which reduce the chance of a pedal touching the road in a corner. So, my choice is made to switch to the MTB Flatties. 

That all sounds great, but then I tried fitting the MTB Flatties and to my surprise while the diameters were comparable (9/16"), the threading was different! I wondered whether the cranks had some old English threading, but that seems like an odd explanation, because I've managed to get modern pedals on a R20 before and know that others have too. More likely, perhaps the threading tooling that Raleigh used was slightly different to modern standard. It could be just some R20s that were like this. I tried a few pedals and I found that most of them were too tight, but one or two modern pedals went in ok, but only on one crank. Whatever the reason, after playing about a bit with modern pedals, I now feel that for this project, I will stick with the original pedals. They are a basic, but serviceable design. The end cap prises off carefully with a thin screwdriver. Underneath, two spring clips and a washer to remove:

There are no BBs just a plain bearing. The axle at the top simply slides into what looks like a tapered sleeve in the pedal, then the washer with flats is added and the two spring clips to hold it all down. This one was gummed up and a quick clean and regrease worked wonders. They spin super smoothly now. At least they are hardly worn and have plenty of service to give. They'll clean up ok and add to the retro look. 

Now consider the light bracket:

What an ugly lump that is, and given modern lights, it's redundant too. It serves a purpose in the headset, that is to increase stack height by a few mm in order to prevent the top lock nut from bottoming out. But that function can be easily achieved with a small standard spacer. How much does this monstrosity weigh? 77g! That's about the weight of SEVEN AAA batteries! Wowsers. Guess where that's going? Yes, in the recycling bin. NB, you have to remove the front brake caliper to get the stem out in order to lift this off the headset (see my post a few days ago on that wire loop thingy that restricts the movement of the stem vertically).

Note that by just by changing pedals and ditching the light bracket, you could save nearly 400g. Astonishing. 

You can repeat this thought process for every other item on the R20, using the factors I suggested at the top of this post (I'm not considering maintenance items, such as brake pads, tyres, BBs, chain and cables):

Sturmey Archer hubs (both the front one and the rear epicyclic AW gear unit): 

Elegant, well thought out, very functional, design kudos, unique, a bit heavy, but worth it! Pretty when clean and polished! I would keep these in nearly every case, unless there was a radically different vision for a particular build. 

Chainset: 

They are not all the same. Some patterns are indeed beautiful, others look more functional, but they have some eye appeal, I like the stamped "Nottingham Knight". They function well if you can deal with cotter pins and can live with the heavy chromed steel.

Bottom bracket:

It's perfectly functional, and isn't heavy, so in my view, this comes down to condition, and how important it is for you to change the chainset/eliminate cotter pins. The axle is a solid thing, and very rarely needs replacement. So, a good service with new BBs is usually all that's needed if you stick with cottered cranks. However, if you want to open up the world of square taper chainsets, then I believe that the simplest and best option is to find a square taper axle that fits and retain the same bottom bracket cups and 1/4" BBs. If that's not possible, then face the shell to 73mm or even 68mm (the width of my BSA 20 shell is 77mm as best as I could measure it), and rethread to standard 24 tpi. Some say that you should fill the threads with with a suitable molten metal before re-threading, but I've also read that many people have had success just rethreading directly, but slightly deeper than the original threads. Clearly a specialist's job. Failing any of those, then a problem solver may be a new threadless (friction fitting) unit. 

Saddle:

Really ugly, uncomfortable for me, and enormously heavy! It's gotta go. 

Seatpost:

Ugly, too short for many people, and very heavy, especially being steel with the steel clamp. Easy swap out to a modern one 28.6 usually. It's gotta go. 

Chrome steel Handlebars and Stem

Function ok, and have a certain elegance. However, they are really rather heavy and often this is were customisation and your personal vision take over. A quill stem, with alloy riser bars, or bullhorns, etc. 

Hand grips:

Yeuk! Hard ugly plastic and short. The only positive thing I can say about them is that they are hard wearing. But, I really think they have to go in just about any project (save for a restoration to original spec). 

Chrome steel rims:

Work ok, but do not brake as well as alloys, especially in the wet. Look nice when clean and polished up. Heavy! My front wheel without nuts, rim tapes, or tyres weighs 940g. With rim tapes, tyres and nuts it weighs 1547g. Go or stay? It's really one of preference and also considering the condition of the steel rims that you have, the hassle of doing a rim swap, or finding/building another wheel that fits and also brakes that work with them. On the other hand, if you're not accelerating and braking a lot then, a heavy wheel provides a nice flywheel effect for steady riding - which is what I tend to do on a Twenty. 

Nylon bushing top part of the headset: 

Functions just about adequately, especially if you get a chance to clean it and lube the surface that touches the steerer, and adjust the headset properly. Once the light bracket is off, there's not much in the weight. So this one is a matter of preference again. This photo is of my current project, rust cleaned off and polished. I've kept the Nylon bushing, but ditched the light bracket (hence the black spacer):

Another approach is to remove the Nylon bushing and install the top half of a 1" threadless headset. When I do that again in the future, I'll be sure to take enough photos and post them on this blog. 

Frame: 

It wouldn't be a Twenty without one! It's a classic, has got to stay.

Forks:

They are designed to fit the cone flanges of the Raleigh Sturmey Archer front hub and they work well enough. A bit heavy. I think this one is mainly down to whether you keep that front hub or not. Also whether you want to do something funky, like BMX forks for 451 or 406 wheels or suspension forks. In which case, you can also change the whole headset. 

Paintwork:

What condition is it in, and do you like it? Will it clean up nicely (after a wash, T-Cut and car polish)? Simple as that. 

Clamps and Locking levers on steerer and seat tube:

These function adequately if well-maintained and positioned properly (evenly over their respective tubing slots). They add a bit of weight, but also provide easy quick adjustment. Also, if you are fitting a quill stem, the front clamp becomes unnecessary and can go (or stay!). So it's really up to you. 

Brake caliper units:

Can function adequately if you take the time to set them up well, and they polish up ok too. Remove rust with WD40 and 0000 steel wool, chrome polish, lubricate and fix and adjust them properly. Use fresh cables. In many instances, I've changed only the inner wires, as the outer cables were fine. If the ends of the outer cables are kinked, you can snip off 5-10mm cleanly and that will improve the performance quite a bit. Modern alloy units would be an improvement and weigh less, but I think this one is really a matter of preference.  Here's a front caliper, with rust cleaned off one arm, but not yet the other one:

Brake levers:

In my view they function adequately, and being steel are better than plastic levers! But there are lighter and better modern alternatives. So, it's a matter of preference for your particular build I think. 

Mudguards (Fenders):

Functional, but do not have the break-off arms for safety as modern ones do and are relatively heavy. Must mount them properly and securely, or those beefy mounting arms could foul a wheel and cause a bad accident. I'm powder coating mine on this build.  

Chainguard:

Serves a function (keeping your trouser leg clean!) and has a certain appearance. Don't weigh a great deal, but grams are grams. It's up to you! I'm powder coating mine on this build.  

As I've said before, the Raleigh Twenty is like a blank canvas to a bike builder! The Raleigh bronze green BSA 20 that I'm working on at the moment is going to retain most of its original components, but with modern contact points (pedals, saddle/seatpost and hand grips). The next one may be a light weight with funky bars and alloy rims, but I haven't clearly figured out my direction on that one at this time.  

Go with your heart and desire, enjoy the process, and all will be ok. Be creative, be artistic! 

Chuck's Tech Opinion: Shimano Uniglide cassettes, replacing cogs/sprockets

Just before Shimano came up with the Hyperglide (HG) cassette system that we know and love today, it introduced the Uniglide (UG) arrangement. It was an 1980s effort to provide not only a cassette system, but also teeth features to improve shifting (especially for the indexing 'click' that is pretty much standard now). I happen to have such a cassette in 6 speed - they were produced in 5, 6, 7 and 8 speed. Generally, UG cassettes are rare these days, while screw-on freewheel types remain relatively abundant. This post is about cleaning and re-jigging my Uniglide cassette, currently 13-14-15-17-19-21T, and my thoughts about it. I want to dismantle, clean and swap out one of the cogs to allow me to put in a bigger 24T. Photo before I started work:

Yes, it's dirty, and the grime is stuck hard! If you've never seen a Uniglide cassette before, then it could be confusing. It has neither Hyperglide's splined lockring nor the spline socket that screw-on freewheel types have. It does have a freehub body, much like the modern Hyperglide, but all the splines are the same width. Instead of the HG lockring, the topmost cog is screwed down on to the upper part of the freehub body, which is partially threaded, to hold everything together. The 24T cog that I want to add is the black one in the photo. To dismantle, you use 2 chain whips to hold the wider cog, while unscrewing the topmost cog (13T):

Thankfully it unscrewed fairly easily. Turned over, you can see the cutouts for weight reduction and the three small bolts that hold the unit together. The top locking cog (13T) has an inbuilt spacer and is threaded on its inside. 

View from the other side, there is a thin washer under the top locking cog (13T), and you can see the bolts engaged in the three small threaded holes in cog 14T:

The bolts need to come out. The bolts have a smooth shaft and are threaded at their tip. They screw only into the matching threaded holes in the 14T cog: 

Taking off the 14T cog, there are identical plastic spacers between the remaining cogs:

I cleaned up the parts and started to refit. In this photo you can see the threading on the upper part of the freehub body. Apparently, it's possible to change that body for a HG one, but why bother when this seems little worn and is functioning beautifully. Also, I think the threading on Dura Ace is different - presumably an attempt to keep it "exclusive" and apart from the mass market! I've placed the new 24T on first, then a plastic spacer:

Looking at the splines on 19T, note the absence of the wider notch and narrower notch. Also note the three holes for the bolts - these are present in everything, spacers, washer and cogs. I'm not going to use the bolts as their main purpose is to hold the cassette together for easy fitting. 

In the photo above, you can see two teeth features designed to improve shifting. Firstly, two opposing teeth on the 17T cog are shorter. These provide avenues for the chain to dismount as you shift. Secondly, you can just see the twist of all teeth. These features are the precursor of Hyperglide teeth shaping. Place cog, spacer, cog spacer, etc... until you reach the penultimate one, then the thin washer goes on:

Now you can clearly see the threading on the freehub body to take the last locking cog 13T. Put that last one on carefully by hand, to ensure threads are not crossed! Then tighten it with a chain whip, but it's not really necessary to strain yourself doing that, because the process of pedalling will tighten it. In fact, when I put it into top gear while riding, I felt the slight slip as it tightened into position. Here's a pic of the removed bolts and 14T cog, which I'll be putting away carefully in my bits box. Only some cogs had the shorter opposing teeth pairs:

The finished cassette. Not so dirty now! Can you spot the shorter teeth in the picture below? Hint: there are none in the top locking cog (13T). Notice that the 24T cog has them, which means it's not really intended to be a last cog - contrast with 21T (see photo above) which is stamped 'Low' and doesn't have the shorter teeth. I don't think it really matters, and presumably, having the shorter teeth on the biggest cog will help switching from 24T to 21T.  

Now a photo of the bike in which this wheel goes, my Dawes Impulse (see previous posts): 

And a closeup of the cleaned cassette newly configured to: 13-15-17-19-21-24T, with the vintage super-cool Shimano 105 mech:

One thing you need to check for is that the chain is long enough to handle cross-chained big-big. Even if you're not supposed to use that gear, it is wise to ensure that the chain is long enough for it to be engaged otherwise you can break things. To my relief, it was long enough.  

CHUCK'S TECH OPINION ON UNIGLIDE

I thoroughly enjoyed working on my Uniglide cassette, because the quality of manufacture is superb, and everything disassembles and fits well. It was easy to remove the bolts (using quality pliers). This is better than those annoying rivets in modern cassettes, but I can understand that rivets would be much cheaper than those three bolts when it comes to mass production. 

Test riding was magic! It shifted positively, flawlessly, and the indexing was spot on. Definitely the crispest shifting bike with down tube levers that I've ever owned and I'm comparing here to both screw-on freewheels and even more modern 9 speed Hyperglide hubs. (Perhaps that's because the tolerances, both cog-spacing and lever-indexing, for 6 speed are more forgiving compared to the narrower 9 speed?). 

Another great advantage is that the uniform spline widths allow you to invert each cog. Useful to maximise working life, as worn cogs may be simply turned around. While I like this and it resonates with today's re-use, up-cycle culture, it is not the ideal situation for the capitalist mass-producer who wants sales (think Apple iPhones and OS upgrades that render one's device slow). I think that is part of the reason why we have modern riveted cassettes and non-reversible cogs today.  Also, I suspect that with different width spacers, you may use the same freehub body to build up a 5, 7 or 8 speed cassette, but I haven't tried it and would have to research the standards for that (i.e. spacer widths, cog thicknesses and overall hub body height).  

In its time in the 1980s, Uniglide was top-end and a step-forward in smoothness of shifting and ease of indexation. I can appreciate why. Uniglide hubs are ultra-rare nowadays, so the information in this post is really for bike nuts, the sake of history, or those who accidentally come across one. Feel lucky if you do though because from what I've seen, a new old stock Uniglide cassette can sell for £60-£100!