I thought that the rear spacing was 114mm? Wouldn't that have meant that you needed to pull your rear arms out 6mm's a piece?

@Heliomatic:

Thanks I'll give it a look-see. If it's the same one from Sheldon Brown's site, then I've already read it, and it was a good read.

3mm apiece, not 6mm apiece.

I'm confused, if the Folder's rear spacing is 114mm and his hub width is 126mm the difference is 12mm, and that is split between both chain/seat-stay arms, making it a 6mm spread-out for each arm, how is it only a 3mm spread-out per c/s-stay arm? Or am I missing something key to how this works?

Oops. My arithmetic error. You're right. It's 6mm on each side.

Sorry... I was saying my Rear Hub is 126mm, but for my Panasonic. I still don't have a Twenty. Sorry for the confusion.
-Gene-

My lady's Twenty is as perfect a specimen as I have ever found and Gene... don't ask how much I paid because you will be very sad.

Gorgeous!

Very nice lil 20!

I'm back...

The best thing you can do for any Twenty is to replace the stock steel wheels with alloy rims and upgrade the brake pads to Kool Stops so the bike will stop safely when it is wet.

I have done far more radical modifications to my own Twentys.

Alloy wheels will also lighten the bike up a little and increase it's performance... those red line tyres are quaint but the girl's bike is now wearing Schwalbe marathons as they too increase the bike's performance.

I also changed the front brake and stock levers and fitted MKS pedals to give better traction as the bike lives in Portland Oregon where wet weather performance is critical.

Oh yeah... I swapped the stock 15 tooth cog to a 19 to give the bike a better gearing for climbing hills and towing a trailer as the stock gearing is a trifle high.

As she sits now...



Mine... it is a Phillip's version that wasn't quite as pretty when I found it but it has been a solid and dependable bike.

Those look so clean, I'm envious. I would have to strip and repaint/re-decal mine to get them as close to clean as yours are.

I'm trying to refurb this Folder to an "as original" state as possible. I don't want to mod it out if it's possibly going to be for re-sale.

I know that in the future I'm definitely going to try and find one, for myself and that one will be the one that gets all the mods.

Thanks for the pics and the suggestions!

My 20's were pretty scruffy when I received them as they had been employed by Shell Oil as facility bikes... they came with name tags and my little fixer is named Forrest and his sister Grace went through quite a few transmogrifications before I settled on her final form.

This was a lot more work as besides re-tapping the bb to run a modern crank I also had to cut down and reface the headtube so that I could fit a new headset and suspension fork which allowed me to really increase the stopping power with a v brake.

My friend had been looking for a modded out Twenty and it was love at first ride... he covered my parts cost and I figure the time I put in to the build was 4-5 hours. It helps when you have a fully equipped shop and have done this a time or two.

Some more info on R20's...

Rear spacing is 114 mm and front is 95mm which makes fitting a modern hub a pita since those fork blades are exceptionally stiff and don't really give. I used some super slim lock nuts on my front wheel and also had to file the dropout to handle the diameter of a modern axle. Go slow and work from the front and you should be okay... I have a die grinder with a tapered cutter and this makes short work of this kind of job but if you don't have great skills with these I would not suggest it.

If you are rebuilding wheels you can use the stock front hub but note that it will be a Raleigh hub with a one sided cone adjustment, the adjustable cone goes on the non drive side and the bearing pre-load gets set when the wheel is installed.

SA cone wrenches are great to have.

The P20 has a narrower bb shell than an R20 so after re-tapping to 24 tpi and adding a few threads for greater depth (shells were 72)... R20 bb shells are wider and will need to be narrowed which makes the job a lot harder if you go this route. I have also noted that the bb shells with many lower end Raleigh bikes are not uniformly finished and they can vary between bikes so make sure you measure carefully.

They may be one of the most fun bikes ever made... elegant when original and a blank slate for many people to build on.

My next 20 project will be a folding mtb / trail bike with 24 inch wheels and disc brakes.

Wow. Retapping the BB shell? How deep do the threads end up being? I didn't think you can retap to a different pitch when the inside diameter is the same! Please explain.

And did you say your girlfriend lives in Portland?! That's a megameter from Edmonton.

Anyway, these projects are inspiring. My daughter is 18 and loves the Twenty, so maybe she'd like to take it to college with her. I think she'll have some pride in how hip it is, being unlike all the other bikes on campus. She also has a Conti racing bike, which she can take on weekend rides.

I wonder if it will be feasible to send her to college with two bikes and an upright bass.

Tom - Your options in upgrading a Raleigh cottered crank to cotterless is pretty limited... finding replacement square taper spindles is nearly impossible (for a Twenty) so your options are to use a Phil Wood bb as they support the 26 tpi Raleigh standard, use a hard to find Shimano UN72 with PW retaining rings, or re-tap the bb shell to 24 tpi.

Phil Wood bottom brackets are the best but it is a pricey option.

In practice re-tapping the shell to 24 tpi works well, you need a good guided tap and in the case of Raleigh Twenty's you also need to cut down / reface the shell as they are 76 mm wide. I do not know of other 20 clones but the Phillip's Twenty will accept a 73 mm cartridge since it's bb is only a < mm off this standard.

Other Raleigh models are not so difficult to work with in this regard as replacement spindles can still be found but it that wide 76 mm shell that causes the greatest issues.

From my mentor on such things... Sheldon was a great teacher and inspiration.

Cartridge Bottom Brackets
Modern cartridge bottom brackets are much easier to deal with than the old-style cup-and-cone design. There are two possibilities for running a cartridge bottom bracket in a Raleigh 26 TPI shell:

*
Phil Wood
Phil Wood bottom brackets are sold separately from the mounting rings that screw into the frame. Phil Wood is the only manufacturer still supporting 26 TPI bottom bracket threading. The quality is superb, there's nothing better. The bad news is that Phil Wood bottom brackets are among the very most expensive available.

*
Shimano UN72 With Phil Wood Rings
It happens that Shimano UN72 bottom brackets can also be used with Phil Wood retaining rings. The UN72 model is the only Shimano series you can use this way, because the other Shimano models have the right side threads machined into the cartridge body.

Unfortunately, for the 2003 model year, Shimano has replaced teh UN72 bottom bracket with the revised UN73 design. The UN73 is a fine bottom bracket, but it does not have a removeable mounting ring on the right side. The threads are part of the shell, as with the other Shimano cartridges, so the UN73 will not work with Phil Wood rings.

Phil Wood retaining rings don't have any shoulders on them, so they can be screwed all the way into the shell, even recessed below the edge of the shell. This greatly reduces problems due to the wider shell width.

On wider shells, such as the 76 mm shells used on Raleigh Twentys, you might want to hacksaw the right end of the shell off to bring the width into normal range. Since the Phil Wood retainers don't use the edge of the shell as a mating surface, a good freehand cut, smoothed over with a file, is a reasonable option.

The crank is working fine, so I'm less inclined to replace it than other things on the bike. In fact, even with the steel rims, I think it rides OK. We don't know where Daughter will end up, so if she ends up in a flat place, we can leave the rims. I'm certainly not going to the expense of a Phil BB.

I know how to tap and face a BB, though I don't have the tools. Once I do that (assuming that I change my mind about changing the crank), can't I just fit a regular old BB and cotterless crank?

I got my little fixer down to 24 pounds after I swapped the wheels, removed the integrated stand (1 whole pound), and swapped the cranks to a Stronglight instead of that cheap cottered unit.

The crank and chain wheel on the Phillips is not nearly as nice as the Raleigh heron chain wheel and crank but does run a 3/32 pitch which helped when I built up Grace with a dual drive and used 3/32 cogs in the rear.

She lived life as a commuter before she got her groove back... the dual drive made hill climbing so much easier and let me retain a top gear of about 90 gear inches as well.

24 pounds! Wow. I think this one is 38 pounds.

I find the gearing to be pleasantly low. Then again, I have unusually good climbing muscles. But it is much lower than the gearing on my Raleigh Sports, which is TOO high.

The Raleigh crank is very nice so would not bother changing it out unless it really needed some work.

With Forrest running as a fixed gear running a 52 tooth ring was essential to give me a decent all around gearing and when I build up a new rear wheel I will probably go with a Phil Wood 12 tooth cog and lockring to increase that gearing to 8i0 gear inches and retain the 14 tooth which gives a decent 70 gear inches.

But the wheels really need to go... I have never ridden a bike that braked as poorly as a Twenty (in the rain) and using drop bolts so that one can utilize stiffer shorter reach brakes is also a pretty common mod.

The steel Raleigh brakes work far better than the alloy versions as they flex less.

My cobbled together drop bolt...

I like the drop bolt.

You're right; I'll have to think about improving the brakes. They suck.

I've never brazed, so as a first time, maybe I should consider doing what John S Allen did: brazed on cantilever bosses, but he put them above the rims, and he attached Mafac centerpulls to them. It's a very nice idea. They brake well, and they don't protrude from the frame.

The stock gearing on a Twenty is almost identical to a full size Sports, the Twenty uses a 15 tooth cog in the rear to offset the wheel size.

I used to be a very strong climber but for 12 to 18 % grades the low gear on any Raleigh three speed was burdensome to use... reducing the gearing on an SA three speed always impacts the top gear and this is why I built a dual drive and am using a 3 speed dual drive conversion kit on my '54 Sports.

I don't know how to measure grades, so I don't know what we have around here. I call the hills steep, but I know there are other places with steeper hills.

I like to ride in our river valley where getting in is easy and getting out warrants lower gears... my girlfriend rode her Twenty here before I shipped it off and there was only one grade she could not handle with the Twenty as it was geared and it is my ride when I am in Portland.

As I often don't have full use of my left leg I can't climb as well as a I used to so having a lower gearing helps a great deal.

Luckily my BB/etc. works well and I don't have any aspirations to lighten the bike for aforementioned reasons, so I'll be keeping the original cottered crank (I'm sure most people have gotten over the kitchyness of things like the Phoenix-head chainring, but I love it). I'll think about alloy rims.

Thanks for the added info.