Old 04-30-13, 04:35 PM
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sailorbenjamin
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Location: Rhode Island (an obscure suburb of Connecticut)
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Lentonstein reborn...again! (59 Raleigh Lenton Grand Prix)

When life gives you Lentons, well, I finally got serious with this thing, more or less. Here's the first build, sort of tongue in cheek;
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...in!?highlight=
I continued with the faux grange trouver (French for fake barn find) theme.

I'm back up to 8 speeds, the chain hits the seatstay on the fifth cog but the bike wasn't built for a fifth cog anyway.

I upgraded the old Benolux suicide shifter to a Schwinn Approved Huret, the only front derailler I have that I could use without running cable housing all the way to the shifter (anyone have a one eared downtube cable stop they don't need?).

I found one of those single clamp on bosses that goes over a preexisting single braze on boss.

The proper bars/stem/lever for this bike are currently involved in a hot rod Triumph 3 speed that I'm working on so I took the leftover combo from a '67 Carlton that I parted out last year. I like the way the chipped white paint goes with the rest of the bike. It does have a centerpull cable stop that doesn't fit in with this build though. I didn't have enough of any one color old bar tape to do the whole job and new bar tape would have looked out of place (anyone else here hoard old bar tape to match the patina on future builds?) so I had to punt and do a harlequin job. My first

It puts a lot of white into the aesthetics up front that should maybe be balanced by a white tail fender out back. I tried some fenders off of a '63 Columbia 3 speed and I like the proportions a lot. I also like the little fin on the back. Maybe they'll find their way onto this bike sometime.


The wheels are off of a crusty old hybrid. They're on their last leg but it's pothole season here on the NY/NJ border and I'm tired of fixing the flats on my 700x20 shod Competition. I can ride without worry and I think they look great proportionally. And again, if they were any shinier they'd look out of place.
Patina? well, there's enough of it here. Maybe even too much for me. This is supposed to be a silver bike but there's not much left except for the famous Raleigh black undercoat. I'm tempted to take all of the silver off and put some repro decals on the black. Maybe I'll spread the rear end to take more gears and paint it red with skinny tires. Maybe I'll get used to it. I don't know, I'll have to ride it some and let it speak to me. For now, it's a fun ride.
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