Originally Posted by
unterhausen
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I definitely have an anti-Raleigh bias. Their response to the bike boom was to make as many bikes as they could and many frames were really poor quality. ....
I worked on them, and since I was low on the seniority list mostly I worked on the Nottingham bikes including the 3 speed bikes, thus I agree with you on the low quality. But, I thought that the Carlton bikes were quite good. When I was working at that Raleigh shop, the Grand Prix (a Nottingham bike) was still a cottered crank where most of the other brands were using cotterless cranks.
Originally Posted by
Bandera
I have similar biases against other Marques of the era, but not against Carlton ...
For the OP: Getting enough seat time on two different machines of the same era in a variety of terrain, weather and road surfaces will lead to two questions that decide "which" is the LD choice.
1) Which is the best fit?
B) Which bike would I rather be on after a poor night's sleep heading out for many hours on steep, unfamiliar, badly paved wet roads into a cold headwind all day?
...
Agree on Carlton frames.
I would add another criteria, since a 70s frame will likely be ridden as a 6 or 7 speed bike, is there something about it that makes that shortcoming (compared to 8, or 9, or 10, or 11, or ...) worth putting up with because of other advantages?
A lot of things can be done to modernize an old frame. My early 1960s Italian bike now has clincher wheels instead of the original tubulars, a modern triple crank, modern clipless pedals, etc. I also decided to put modern brake levers on it and a threadless stem that uses a quill to threadless adapter. But I still am using the original downtube friction shifters, vintage Mafac brakes and the original front derailleur,