Originally Posted by
gugie
Riding home I was impressed by the well mannered ride, typical of good sport touring bikes of this period. The deficiencies were in the components.
A new bar wrap, and off we go.
finally! Pictures!
I'm impressed at how well the bar tape matches.
Originally Posted by
gugie
Shifting the plastic Simplex derailleurs left me wanting. The front derailleur was too low. Shifting into the big chainring meant rubbing on the chain guard. I could raise it to eliminate this issue, but then the shifting would suffer. The middle cog was noisy - the chain was pinched between cog and pulley. My high school friend Bob subbed French for Japanese - SunTour VGT derailleurs with micro-ratcheting lefts made a big difference. The Simplex models on this bike were the opposite of smooth.
Oy.. plastic Simplex derailleurs! yep, just a bit of that classic French "charm". It's not like it was a surprise to anyone back in those days. The switch to SunTour derailleurs was what I did too.
Originally Posted by
gugie
The white and lagoon blue paint job, along with the chrome socks make this quite a looker, even today.
I always loved the looks of my lagoon blue w/white Gran Sport! Raleigh had a way with their paint schemes that made even their mid-level models look great!
I was fortunate enough to be able to buy my Gran Sport with my high school earnings, but still drooled over the higher level models too... which may explain why I own an International and a 753 Team. Sometimes you just have to scratch those itches!
Steve in Peoria