Touring - Raleigh R300 Refit

I am refitting an older (1998) R300 for touring and need some parts advice. The original RSX shifters are gone, as is the front derailler and the middle chainring and stem bars. Which is not so bad as I am a little tall 6'4" for the bike but not that much. So.......

Need shifters. Shimano Sora makes a 3x7 which sounds good.
Nitto stem and noodle bars. Their taller stem also can get me one more inch of length too.
Change out 26/36/46 and get a 52 ring? I am old, grumpy, and out of shape! If so, will the radius on the original RSX derailleur be wrong?
Any advice much appreciated!

I am refitting an older (1998) R300 for touring and need some parts advice. The original RSX shifters are gone, as is the front derailler and the middle chainring and stem bars. Which is not so bad as I am a little tall 6'4" for the bike but not that much. So.......

Need shifters. Shimano Sora makes a 3x7 which sounds good.
Nitto stem and noodle bars. Their taller stem also can get me one more inch of length too.
Change out 26/36/46 and get a 52 ring? I am old, grumpy, and out of shape! If so, will the radius on the original RSX derailleur be wrong?
Any advice much appreciated!

26/36/46 is ok for touring. 52 is good for superman and really fit man ;) You will not need it. Ride a little, get in shape and then decide if you want to go for 52.
I do think that you will have trouble with derailler moving from 52 to 26.
If you are looking for loaded touring, you should consider swapping 26 to 22.
What cassette you have on the back wheel? For touring it should be about -11-34, which I think RSX not built for. I have RSX on my Trek 1200, but the front is 52-39 and rear is 11-25. This is very hard setup when going up a hill not loaded.

Thanks so much! The rear is 11-24, which was stock for the bike.

Thanks so much! The rear is 11-24, which was stock for the bike.

Yep, this should be changed for touring.
You will need to change the shifter , drealiur and the cassette to 11-34. Its MTB parts like LX or Deor.

I am going to just put it back together stock and ride for a while. Its too old and the fit not that great. I will use this for tooling around the neighborhood and focus on a bigger frame/better fit bike later. Appreciate the input

I have a 21 inch Raleigh R300 ~ 1995 or 96 model. It came with RSX brifters and the 46-36-26 crankset. I liked the chainring sizes and kept them but I had the LBS switch out the rear cluster for a wider range. The original rear cluster only went up to a 25 cog. I put on a cluster with a 32 large cog. However to get it to shift properly, I had to have the front and rear derailleurs replaced. The LBS put on a 105 front derailleur and a Deore XT rear derailleur.

Don't bemoan the loss of the RSX shifters/brakes. The braking on this bike has never been good which is probably why the original owner changed it. I kept the brifters and brakes but had to have some modifications made. The LBS put a wider yoke on the cantilever brakes to get more leverage. Unfortunately, that made it hard for me to squeeze the brifters. Finally, I added cyclocross interrupter brake levers to the tops of the handlebars and use them almost exclusively for braking while still using the brifters to shift. With these modifications, the braking is much better.

I also put on a longer stem (a Zoom adjustable stem which doesn't look good but gets the bars up high) and a Brooks B72 saddle which looks very good.

Now I like the bike :)

Maureen

Thanks for the input. I now have this project nearly done. I need to finish the chain and cable set up then adjust and go. No one seems to like the RSX stuff. I will see how stuff works for a while..

Thanks for the input. I now have this project nearly done. I need to finish the chain and cable set up then adjust and go. No one seems to like the RSX stuff. I will see how stuff works for a while..

Get us some visuals man ;)

OK Not good with photos but I will give this a try.

OK Not good with photos but I will give this a try.

Nice one!
Isn't the frame small for you? I see you had raise both the saddle and bar.

Yes, a bit small. I will ride for a while to see how it works. I would be happiest on a very large frame but am not interested in sinking a lot of dough into a bike for now. I may build up an older tall frame.