Took my 'new' Raleigh Sports in to the office this week. It's a 1972 Standard (S22): no pump pegs, Endrick rims, no headlight mount... and after studying the sticker at the bottom of the seat tube (which is covered mostly by a bike shop decal from Sudgen & Lynch of Menlo Park)... the bike was definitely made in Malaysia.
I took it for a maiden voyage Wednesday, and it's super comfortable and smooth -- it's going to be the perfect downtown bike. I have a 20 mile drive to the office, so it will strictly serve for lunchtime rides and getting mileage in to prep for next spring's GAP/C&O trip.
It's now shifting through all three gears well -- though downshifts seem to require more effort. This is one of those bikes that's suffered more dis-use than overuse, so now that I've lubed the hub well, it probably just needs some exercise. The chrome cleaned up super well, but the front Endrick rim seems to have suffered disproportionately -- I'd like to replace that so if anyone has a fairly nice Endrick wheel sitting around, let me know.
Norfolk is almost completely flat, but we do get wind --3rd gear is just too high to be useful. I'm thinking of changing out the rear cog to either 22T or 24T. Any thoughts or recommendations on that would be appreciated.
And I need to come up with a good name for her.
Here she is at my desk up on the 15th floor of the new Wells Fargo Center (to the right you can see the tracks of our new light rail, The Tide):
