Bought this as a christmas present for my girlfriend. Cost a fair amount on fleabay but it was in good nick and mechanically fine, needs a new seat though.
Broke it down, mudguards and chainguard nitromorsed and properly de-rusted, the frame was fine so it didn't get stripped, just the flakey bits were treated and anti-rust painted. Local shop was out of Hycote so I went to Halfords and got some primer... what a load of watery curse word that was... used one can and took the rest back
Hanging some washing out on the line...
Painted it Ford Nordic Blue and gave it a few coats of lacquer as it'll have a fairly rough life.
I plan to do it properly when we've moved in together (so she won't need it every day). I'm hoping to get a fairly modern mountain bike and scavenge the V-brake mounts and weld them to the frame so it has decent brakes. I'm gonna get some aluminium wheels for it too, as these chromed ones weigh a ton and if you use anything but cork or felt pads the chrome wears off, so the brakes are even more useless than normal single-pivot calipers. They don't look as nice but the performance is so much better that I'm willing to sacrifice.
I'm also hoping that I can steal the little bit where the seat stay and chain stay meet and combine it with the bike so that it can accept a dropout for a derailler, it's currently got a 3-speed sturmey archer which isn't very practical as the bike weighs quite a lot. I suppose I could try to scavenge a six speed hub gear system but I'll have to look into it...
So yeah, I'll stop my rambling now...
As an aside, anyone know roughly how much an original Raleigh Chopper is worth? I found my dad's old one when we were clearing out my granddads house. It's a series 1 (from memory), hasn't been used since the 70s, works fine, has a few chips but should clean up alright. I don't have any pictures of it right now
Broke it down, mudguards and chainguard nitromorsed and properly de-rusted, the frame was fine so it didn't get stripped, just the flakey bits were treated and anti-rust painted. Local shop was out of Hycote so I went to Halfords and got some primer... what a load of watery curse word that was... used one can and took the rest back
Hanging some washing out on the line...
Painted it Ford Nordic Blue and gave it a few coats of lacquer as it'll have a fairly rough life.
I plan to do it properly when we've moved in together (so she won't need it every day). I'm hoping to get a fairly modern mountain bike and scavenge the V-brake mounts and weld them to the frame so it has decent brakes. I'm gonna get some aluminium wheels for it too, as these chromed ones weigh a ton and if you use anything but cork or felt pads the chrome wears off, so the brakes are even more useless than normal single-pivot calipers. They don't look as nice but the performance is so much better that I'm willing to sacrifice.
I'm also hoping that I can steal the little bit where the seat stay and chain stay meet and combine it with the bike so that it can accept a dropout for a derailler, it's currently got a 3-speed sturmey archer which isn't very practical as the bike weighs quite a lot. I suppose I could try to scavenge a six speed hub gear system but I'll have to look into it...
So yeah, I'll stop my rambling now...
As an aside, anyone know roughly how much an original Raleigh Chopper is worth? I found my dad's old one when we were clearing out my granddads house. It's a series 1 (from memory), hasn't been used since the 70s, works fine, has a few chips but should clean up alright. I don't have any pictures of it right now
