couple more thoughts (I just love a good mystery): the catalog shows and lists a lamp-boss on the fork, yours does not have it, right? the BB may not be original, but I'd want to open it up and check the threading (24 or 26tpi?) as well as look for more original paint clues. There's a chance the fork is not original, especially if the paint fragments don't match, but the crown looks pretty consistent with others used by Raleigh (Nervex or not) as well as loads of other makes, too.

Heck, I'm not even a collector and I'm having fun watching you "detectives" figure this out

there is no lamp boss(whatever that is) but the same blue paint on the steerer is also coming through on the headtube when I applied stripper. I think the fork is original. Unfortunately I dont have the right tool here to open up BB, will have to get back with that one.

Where is my head today; I rode the Raleigh to work and it's standing right behind me! The rivet triangleis just over 7/8" on the base (measured around the tube diameter) and just under 1-3/8" on height. Say 22 x 34 mm (though I doubt Raleigh did metric).

My orange Falcon is certainly from the age of fork blade headlight bosses, and does not have one either. I feel left out, but there it is. It's not possible that "RA" in the serial number means Record Ace, is it?

I have the '62 UK catalog, and the rear brake cable for the Gran Sport clearly goes through a hanger that's attached to the seat-post bolt. I also have the one US one that Sheldon Brown has that scan from, and it also looks like a hanger attached to the seat bolt. You can see that UK catalog in the flicker set I found:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jwright...7594494565758/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jwright...7594494565758/

Of course, both are drawings rather than actual pics, so who knows?!

Neal

yes.. just measured triangle and it's a match - thanks for clearing that up! As for Record Ace I don't know what that might mean.

yeah, like I said, someone at the factory huffing solvents while reading the spec sheet!

I don't think that Reynolds straight-gauge 531 would have taken a seatpost that small.
28.6 - 25.4 + .2 (for clearance, typ.) = 3 mm. That means that the tubing would have to be 1.5 mm thick. That's way thick for 531, which at the butted ends is either .8 or .9 mm, as far as I've ever seen.

The Falcon I keep rattling on about has seamed tubing, and from the weight, I assume that it's not butted either; but it takes a 26.6 mm seatpost nonetheless. You have to go to high-tensile tubing, or French tubing sizing (which Reynolds made, 0.6 mm smaller diameter, both OD and ID) to get to the really small seatposts.

I just discovered upon further paint stripping that there are those brass "splotches" on the steel tubing... isn't this indicative of high tensile?

I have a Lenton Sports from about the same vintage. It's a lower end model than your Gran Sport, but has some similarities, such as the hi-ten steel frame. Some photos here:
https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...=lenton+sports
The interesting thing there, and the reason I mention it, is that my frame has a completely bizarre braze on on the left chain stay. Someone suggested that it's for attaching a full chain case, which explains it pretty well, except for the glaring fact that this bike never had a full chain case and was never supposed to have one. Also bizarre is the oiler, just like yours except that it's on the RIGHT side of the BB. Could be that the Raleigh factory was just full of solvents, back then. Spec sheet? I don't need no shtinkin' shpeck seet....

Just another Raleigh model. Sometimes lower on the model lineup, sometimes better (unless I'm thinking of Record Road Ace). Raleigh tended to redefine the attributes of bikes with the same model names through the decades, and the "quality" level of the same names in different years varied considerably.

I don't think so, you're just seeing brazing material -- the "hard solder" that all lugged bikes are sweated together with.

If I had to meet a 100 bike a day quota I'd change things up a bit too, probably without huffin solvents.

hhmmm, what's this curved cable bridge doing in my lunch pail?

A 1962 Raleigh Gran Sport it is! Great work everyone - Thank you, this was fun and educational... I will be posting my rebuild on C&V thread for sure. I hope I can help all of you solve such a mystery some day. I'm gonna find a vintage Raleigh head badge for this one, sans any other decals.

Well, if that's settled, then here are your decals. I bet that Greg Softley in Oz could be prevailed on to make a set, or maybe that guy in England (whose name escapes me right at this moment) has an original set!

I recall reading somewhere that they changed the side of the oiler at one point.
FWIW, I have a '66 or '67 Hercules and the BB shell casting has a small flat spot that would be where an oiler would go. I've often suspected that they may have changed oiler location when the tooling wore out and they made new. Then continued to use some old tooling well beyond the time they were using BB oilers.

Just a guess, though.

Charles, thanks! I really love those.. very good of you to post them for me. Let me know about the guy in england who has originals.. I'm also gonna start looking for the headbadge. Those decal colors will look beautiful on the frame once powdercoated all white!

mooo, you're probably right about them continuing to use tooling, makes sense.

Make sure you get the right head badge, because there are different iterations of the Heron badge. The experts here can guide you on that.