My TI-Raleigh SBDU Blog

I always expect old bikes to be problematic when I come to take them apart. They are often suffering from years of neglect and lack of maintenance. This one however, was easy! ...
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There I was, enjoying a quiet Sunday evening watching TV and browsing eBay, when a bike with an SB serial number popped up. The frame number was SB7660 and it was an Ilkeston Randonneur ...
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Realistically, there may not be many 'original owners' of SBDU frames - I.E. those people who still own an SBDU frame that they ordered and bought for themselves from Ilkeston. There may be even fewer original owners who have a frame with an 'H' reference ...
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I have a list of frames that I want in my SBDU collection. That list of frames is slowly getting smaller; but on that list was a 753 Time Trial Special ...
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I have a few SBDU frames and recently decided that if I'm going to add to the collection, it had to be something different to the red/black/yellow 'Team' livery frame ...
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It's been a while, spare time has been tight, but I finally got some time today to fit this Chris King 2Nut headset ...
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Anything that is stuck or seized in a frame is bad news. It is even more bad news when the wall thickness of the frame tubing is extremely thin. Reynolds 753 tubing of this type has a wall thickness less than 1mm ...
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Since getting this frame I've been trying to figure out what it is? ...
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Now this is a little something very special for me. This frame came up in a topic on the Retrobike forum. It got my attention because of the SB frame number and the 'DENTON' decals ...
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Another complete bike! I'm getting through them, slowly but surely I'm turning frames into complete bikes ...
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I've just realised that I have never detailed the build of this bike. I tried my best to recreate a build specification that was sent by Gerald O'Donovan to a customer in 1982 ...
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It must be a few months since I finished building my TI-Raleigh Team Pro, so it's time to move onto frame number 2 ...
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I'm going to use a term that my 13 year old daughter Lauren uses... "Oh My Gosh!", it's finished! Christmas has come early, I have a complete Raleigh Team 753!!!! ...
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After a few diversions with other Raleigh frames, I'm back to my 753 Team Pro. A lot has been happening although it's still not quite there... yet ...
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I wanted to write a new blog post but it has been so long since my last post, I nearly forgot my password! After a few attempts, I'm finally in ...
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It's been a long while since I wrote anything here. This is because I've had no money, meaning I couldn't buy parts to add to my 753 Team Pro ...
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I used to get a new bike every Christmas. This was in the mid to late 70's, and I loved them. They weren't anything special, I had 2 older brothers and a younger sister, who all got a bike, so there wasn't much money to spread around on quality ...
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While I'm saving up the pennies and trying to source more parts for the Raleigh build, I thought I would reminisce a little. One of the best memories from the many I have while working at Denton Cycles was building the Salsa bikes for Jason Mcroy ...
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This may be a lengthy post but I want to recap of what's happened so far in my project to put together my Raleigh TI Team frame. It's been a long 5 months since I bought this frame and that's meant 5 long and slow months of wanting to get as much ...
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My frameset came with an extremely loose and mangled Chorus headset; I really couldn't stand the look of it sitting in this frame, so without waiting till I had a replacement, I took it straight out, throwing it to the bottom of the bin ...
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I have a particular method of building a bike; always have, always will. The 2 things you need to get in first are bottom bracket and headset. You wouldn't believe the problems sourcing a headset but that's a story for another post ...
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When my frame arrived it was using 3 terrible self tapping screws to hold the head badge to the frame... ebay!!!!! Problem solved! ...
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Is my frame 753? How old is it? These are 2 very important questions that need answers. You might also think I'm daft for buying a frame without being sure of it. You're right, I bought it on a hunch, but an educated hunch ...
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After a long time watching frames come and go on the internet, I found a likely suspect on ebay. Other frames that I have seen have always been way too small or way too big; this was perfect, a 57cm ...
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Why create a blog about this? What exactly is this? What am I going to blog about? ...
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