Originally Posted by
BrazAd
When I questioned him about the frame he said "English made Gran Prixs were Raleigh's entry level road bike and were made of of high tensile steel. Raleigh sold to an american corporation in the late 80s that produced their own in house cromoly tube sets mainly 502 and 555sl which are often mistaken as some sort of reynolds magmoly tubing which they are not. This Gran Prix is an American made model made with the before mentioned cromoly tubing."
He's partially right.
A. The Nottingham/Holland Grand Prix models
are high-tensile; produced in various forms since the early '60s; officially terminating production in 1982.
B. Super Grand Prix models were produced in both Nottingham and Japan.
C. "Raleigh USA" came about in 1983: Huffy bought the rights to manage the Raleigh
brand name in America; which included the rights to source the "Raleigh USA" bikes from wherever they pleased. Frames were produced in Japan and Taiwan.
D. Derby took over the Raleigh USA brand name in 1987. The bonded-aluminum Raleigh Technium frames (new for 1987) ushered in the first "American" Raleighs, built in Kent, WA.
Originally Posted by
BrazAd
A friend who has been mentoring me wrote me and said "The Gran Prix is a Raleigh "Bicycle Corp. of America" era. Not near the bike that the Carlton frrames are."
Your friend has his head in his proverbial behind. The work out of Worksop and Nottingham was all over the map for any one of their machines (exception to the Ilkston-made Team Professionals); high or low end. You could find good frames with good lugwork (rare), good frames with sloppy lugwork (about normal), bad frames with good-
looking lugwork (very unusual), and bad frames with sloppy lugwork (they pop up from time to time). Want to see a tale of two Raleigh Internationals with drastically different build quality? Read the bottom of this page:
http://www.jaysmarine.com/raleighinternational.html
Not mentioned there is the story I heard of a shop mechanic who found a crack in the BB of a brand-new Pro.
What's more I've never seen a brand better represented on the internet for tubes pulling from their lugs for lack of proper brass penetration. Neal Lerner also reported a dropout that fell out from lack of brass; the original fork to a mid-1970's Super Course.
On the flip side, the upper-end Raleigh USA (Huffy era) frames - and even the mid and lower-range frames - from Taiwan and Japan always had neat shorelines, clean investment cast lugs (not that pressed lugs are bad, but the Nottingham folk had no intentions of finishing or filing them as intended), good brass penetration, and good ride qualities for what each are.
Nobody knows what 555SL, 555T, or 575SL tubing truly is. 555SL
is seamed. Forks were generally made by Tange for Raleigh. We do know that 555
RSL is Reynolds 531, and you'll only find that on the Team Pro replicas.
-Kurt