Originally Posted by
thumpism
Welp, sad news for you Tourist tourists. I swung by late today to get it if I could, and I could so I did, but it is not the bike--or the bike bones--that we expected/hoped/wanted it to be. Something happened to the left fork blade.
Aside from that heartbreaking detail, the frame and its finish are in pretty decent shape. Paint looks good-ish for the most part.
Hub date is January of '81, so one of the later bikes I've come across. Note the corrosion on the spokes, of which one is bent and pulled the nipple through the rim. Despite this, the rear wheel is astonishingly straight although there are rust patches on the rim.
Never seen a chaincase rusted through like this.
So that's the bike of our collective dreams and speculation. It's in my garage. I don't want it but there are many useful pieces on it for someone in need. Fenders are okay but stays are all bent up, rod brake hardware is mostly there but missing the front pads and a couple of small fasteners, bars and levers are decent. No idea if the Sturmey hub is good but you don't find many bad ones, so I'll need to put an indicator chain on it and see if it shifts.
There you have it. Let me know what the next steps should be. I'd like to see it go to a devotee or, barring that, to a different crazy person. I won't miss it and I think I already have a 40H hub rattling around here somewhere so I don't really need anything on this poor old bike. Thanks for following along.
It looks as if the chaincase and one fork blade spent way too much time in mud and rotted out (unless the fork was cut - didn't look at the pic that close, to be honest - taking care of a million things here at the moment).
If it's an '81, does it have the larger 10mm axle slots instead of 8mm? If so, one of
clubman's forks plus a pair of 700C rims and a coaster brake ought to make that a usable Raleigh Tourist again.
Question - that spoke that pulled through, was that from the rim breaking through or the spoke nipple splitting?
Question #2, but a stupid one: Any chance you'd have the time to get a rough shipping quote to Florida and possibly throw the carcass in a box (even skipping most of the usual box protection?) I really can't justify another project myself, but seeing as I'm the one who goaded you into it, and also seeing as @
clubman has the fork, I'm open to volunteering to be the one who gets this back together into a usable form (unless, of course, there's someone local to you willing to pick it up).
I have one spare high-polish front 700C rim from an Electra Loft 7i that would be a perfect fit; it would just need another for the rear. I have a spare coaster hub and enough spokes kicking about that I should have the right size on hand to build the rear wheel from that.
Would make for a fun Box of Crap build. Honestly, it'll probably wind up being the best riding Tourist I've ever been on, seeing as it won't be dependent on rod brakes and questionably round rims
-Kurt