Originally Posted by capnjonny

What got my attention when I saw the rather scruffy looking single speed conversion sitting in the shop at the Bike Exchange was the head badge on what looked like a very early Raleigh. I guessed sixties or early seventies. I am not a very big fan of fixies and this one had all the hardware stripped off and a flip flop hub installed plus some flat bars. I do know that deconstructing it like that can result in a pretty light bike and this one weighed in at 24.5 lbs. not bad for a High ten frame. Wanting to do something interesting with it I looked around and found a 700c aluminum rim with a Shimano 3 speed hear hub and similar style front wheel. I proceeded to build it up as a 3 speed urban comuter. After assembling everything I took it apart again and was thinking of repainting the scuffed and rusty frame. Then I thought maybe instead of hiding all the bruises I would enhance them and go for the rat rod look. I removed all the braze ons, sanded all the rust down to cleen metal, coated the entire frame and fork in Naval jelley then cleaned everything and coated it with linseed oil and buffed it. The result is as you see here. If the rust comes back it isn't going to hurt this sturdy frame and the new oner has only to apply another coat of oil occasionally. As shown the bike with 32 mm tires weighs only 26.4 lbs. not bad at all for a larger frame and probably 5-6 lbs. lighter that other comparable machines. One nice feature is that you can make the rear cog smaller or larger if you want more low or high end performance.