Having worked for 7 years in a Raleigh shop during the period of transformation from the old factories (based in Canada, england and Holland) to the Asian sourced bikes I got to see a lot of Raleigh's "issues" first hand.

We had a number of frames with poorly brazed joints and fittings. The rear brake bridge insert being the most common to break loose. Seat stay top plates cracking (often from overly aggressive filing), threaded ring inserts in the low end bikes' BB shells coming loose, gaps and holes here and there were also frequent. But it was the tube/lug socket pull outs that got to me. Some looked like only the flux and rust was holding things together. I do remember a couple of DT/HT lugs coming apart that did have a thin edge of brass along the shore line. As though the brazer had gone over the shore line with a filler rod to make it look nice, too bad the internal ring had been forgotten...

As the production moved to Asia the consistency got better. Less failures and more even paint application. But the bikes lost some of the liveliness and "spirit" that we all agreed the old production bikes had. Perhaps it was the tubing got thicker or the geometry became less nimble but we felt that the intangible ride quality was different. I always said that if you got a good English made Raleigh bike (say a Tuesday production before the four pint lunch...) you had a really nice bike. But if you got a Friday afternoon bike you had a pretty poor one. Andy.