76SLT 

I picked up a 71 Competition a few days ago and have it stripped for cleaning. This is a lagoon blue and white one like the Grand Sports.

The Reynolds 531 frame decal is pretty worn so I want to replace it but have not been able to find a version that's exactly like mine. Mine says Butted Tubes but replacements all say Butted Tubes Forks and Stays. Now, when I look closely at it, it clearly shows the Forks and Stays portion blacked out, and I've seen another 71, the lilac version, also blacked out. The forks have 531 decals so I'm wondering if possibly the stays were not 531 so Raleigh altered the decals? Has this been discussed before, and what do you think is going on with these 71 Competitions?

Kuromori

It's a 531 throughout decal with the stays blacked out because that's probably how the bikes were specced at the time. 531 butted main tubes and forks, at least in the 1973 catalog.

verktyg 

The Reynolds 531 sticker on my 1971 Competition is damaged. Never noticed any difference. It's ALL Reynolds 531.

Maybe they were "redacted" on the sticker because the forks, seat and chain stays weren't butted???

Raleigh and Schwinn used these stickers for a while during the "Truth In Advertising" era.



Rest assured, your Competition is all Reynolds 531. Raleigh used those skinny Reynolds straight taper chain stays without wheel clearances pressed in on all of their better bikes in the early 70's.



1974 Raleigh International



1975 Raleigh Pro



1973 RRA Reynolds 531 sticker.



verktyg

Kuromori

531 stays generally weren't butted for this era, which is one reason why later 80's decals were changed to say "Fork Blades, Stays & Butted Frame Tubes." This is true even in the 70's. The 4-star style decal says "Fork Blades, Stays & Butted Frame Tubes," supposedly at the request of Schwinn for clarification, and the catalogs explicitly state that a 531 double butted throughout decal indicates plain gauge stays. "Butted frame tubes, butted steerer, taper-gauge fork blades, and plain gauge head tube and stays." However, as far as I'm aware, other similar models like the pro just used the plain diagonal decal. I don't think it's because the stays weren't butted, nor because the standard decal wasn't being used. I'm pretty sure I've seen pros of this era with unedited diagonal decals, and I remember seeing blacked out 531 diagonal decals on Raleighs before.

I don't see any compelling reason to discount both official Raleigh catalogs and the decal alterations just because of rapid taper stays. Maybe it used mixed stays, maybe Raleigh just ordered rapid taper stays from another company, or maybe due to vertical integration, they did get tubes from Reynolds, but it was a lower grade like Reynolds A/B. I can see a reason why Carlton might have reams of 531 diagonal decals lying around and not use the proper "butted frame tubes" decals. Certainly at their production volume they probably weren't handling box sets. I see considerably less reason to list some higher end models as 531 throughout and this model as 531 butted frame tubes, then modify the decal on top of that if it weren't so. At production volumes of Raleigh (the Carlton factory was making some ~75,000 frames per year (that's not including Nottingham or Ilkeston models), between deliberately underadvertising to create product differentiation, and pinching pennies lowering the spec, I'd lean towards taking Raleigh at face value. My guess is the stays probably aren't 531, unless they were somehow just downgraded for the 1973 model year.

juvela

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The rapier pattern chainstays on my 1969-70 Competition are seamed.

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repechage

does the fork have or had a Reynolds transfer?

this is taxing my memory, but one of these came in for service (was too young to be hired at a shop when new, not that I did not try)
and we concluded that the rear stays were “cost savings” specified.
the diagonal 531 transfer was.... a cheat, as everyone assumed it was the full on tube set.

the later “starred” 531 transfer was understood to answer a legal complaint, or a threatened one was the story. It was CLOUDY on the typical transfer. At the shop I worked for we had a Reynolds cut-away set, chromed, and milled open to show the difference between straight ga Reynolds and the top tier 531. The forks and stays were “taper gauge” and Reynolds was quite proud of the process actually, as it produced a lighter set overall. Hard to describe without that show and tell kit. The potential customers who came in to “stump the expert” were humbled often. That was a class of customer who read the late Frank Berto articles without fail, and then ordered most stuff mail order.

76SLT 

Yes it does have a sticker.

76SLT 

This is the transfer from my 73 Grand Sports. Completely different.

repechage

I did expect to see Reynolds fork transfers- up for debate- are the stays Reynolds of some type or subordinate tubing.
if you take the bottom bracket out and find a seam in the chain stay that is a definitive answer.
i checked the HLloyds site, and did not find the modified transfer you show, nor a descriptive fork transfer in English, there are two French versions, one with S R noted under... no idea on that.

76SLT 

I ordered the frame transfer from Hlloyds yesterday. I already had a new set of the fork transfers from them that I bought a while back. I found both on their site.

cudak888 

That literally looks as if Raleigh ran out of the version used for 531 main triangles only, used the next decal up in the hierarchy, and slapped a line of black paint over "Forks and Stays."

-Kurt

76SLT 

I found this pic of a 72 according to the poster.