Hi,

I just picked up a Raleigh Marathon, about a 57cmCTC, double on front, 6-speed on back, Suntour Blaze rear derailer, 36-108 gearing on the sticker, 27" tires. Serial number is 3?K0***, the question mark is either a 1 or an L and is partially hidden by the cable guide. The bike has the neat little flick stand on the down tube. On the almost invisible decal on the seat tube it says Made in Taiwan.

A couple of fairly recent threads I found with the search tool here titled "Late 80s Raleigh Marathon" and "Still confused about "huffy" built Raleighs" imply this bike might be a 1983 model, is that a good guess?

I kind of like the U.S. flag etched or stamped into the handlebar.

Thinking I might clean and tune this up, change out the foam handlebar grip for some cork or gel wrap, put on a new set of tires, and just ride it as is. The bike is a hair tall for me (long torso, portionately shorter legs) so I probably won't swap out the Sun Tour group for a 6-speed Campy group I pulled off another frame last year (probably save the Campy stuff for a better fitting frame whenever I find one).

I used to have a Raleigh Competition Carlton 10-speed that I still regret selling many years ago, so when I came across this one it sort of struck a soft spot in me.

Learning that it is a Taiwan mfg, not Knottingham England, and slightly too big for me, I still will clean and tune it but might pass it along to my wife's son to ride since he only has a MTB now and is looking to get into riding a little with his own two sons.

Not sure what this post is about except to share what I found and to verify the age of the bike. I'll try to post some pics by this weekend when the sun is up.

ps, is the RetroRaleigh web site still active? All I could find is one hosted on SheldonBrown.com, and RetroRaleigh links in some other threads appear to either be down currently or are down for the count. Here's a link to the Raleigh pages on Sheldon's site:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/retroraleighs/