Please bear with me and my shaggy bike story. It comes together down below.

All this talk of high end mid 80's Raleigh USA bikes... I wanted share my tale.

A friend and I played hooky and took a mid week ride back in 2009. I was on my Goldilocks 1984 Gitane and he was riding a white Raleigh that I'd seen him on a few times before.

Midway through the ride we switched bikes. NO WAY was I going to switch back. After the ride I offered to buy it - NO WAY.

Jump ahead to the following April 15th, I got a call. I paid too much for it but I helped him out with his taxes.

I spent the next several years figuring out what I had. Various CL posting in OR & WA plus eBay sales. The bike had been passed around the Northwest for a number of years like she'd belonged to the Hells Angles!

Old eBay Listing



Eventually it ended up in the SF Bay Area where my friend bought it. How it looked in 2010 when I got it.



It started out as a red and black 1985 Raleigh USA Reynolds 753 Team frame like like this one, made in the UK at Raleigh's SBDU facility in Ilkeston. Serial Number SB8051. (photo posted by Andrew Scott)



The bike had a sordid history. It had been raced by Team Oregon, a sponsored team out of Portland, OR. At some point, it was resprayed and redecaled in Raleigh USA 1990's Team Technium kit at the factory in the Seattle WA area.

The original Team Technium colors were red and blue on white.



About 1990 the colors changed to purple, pink and gold on pearlescent white.



When my friend started overhauling the bike he discovered that someone had packed the BB with red mud! I replaced the original Suntour Superbe BB with a sealed bearing unit. You can still see remnants of the original red paint inside the BB.



From what I gleaned it ended it's racing career as a spare team bike before being let out to pasture. I suspect that it may have been fitted with a carbon fiber fork because the original fork on the bike is still black and wasn't repainted pearlescent white.

The final iteration, looking out through the Golden Gate at sunset November, 2017...





verktyg