My wife recently decided to start riding a bicycle to work. I posted a picture of what I ended up putting together for her in another thread on this forum. Long story short, building up that old Sears "Flightliner" renewed my interest in bicycles and led to me purchasing a '72 Raleigh Sports for myself. I have yet to ride it as it is still on the repair stand that I built awaiting tires.

Since the tires were still not here this weekend I decided that I would use the time to build a Cetma type rack for the front of my "new" Raleigh. I fabricated the rack almost entirely from 1/4" solid round rod, mostly because I had plenty of that on hand. Rather than anchoring it at the handlebars or the brake bolt I decided to use that fancy heron light bracket as the upper mounting point for the 11" x 11", 5 rail, rack that I built. If that does not work out, it will not be much problem to modify the rack to a more conventional mounting. In it's current configuration this rack will probably only fit this one bike as all measurements were made on this bike and I welded everything on the rack so nothing is adjustable (other than bending the struts/mounts.

Anyway, here's a few pictures of my Raleigh Sports 3 speed and the custom made front rack;

Nice job on the rack!!

Nice. That rack could outlast the bike.

Finally a forum where I can say "Nice Rack!" and not get moderated...

Damnit...

1976 ? Where have you been, we missed ya!

Nice work!
The Sports looks like it is in really nice condition, too.

Since you're in Central Texas, may as well also find yourself a nice Hujsak to ride those beautiful Hill Country roads!

Yes, mechanically, it seems to be in very good condition. It has a few dents and dings which were most likely inflicted by falling objects in a garage in which it was stored, also some white overspray here and there. It does not appear to have been ridden much at all. All the little diamond shapes on the rubber pedals are still nice and sharp, the Raleigh brand tires have dry rotted but do not appear to be worn. The Brooks B72 is probably dried out/deteriorated beyond repair. The cables all seem to work as intended, even the adjustment seems close, if not, dead on.

While awaiting tires to arrive I have had plenty of chance to tinker with the bike a bit in preparation for the first ride on it.

I have cleaned the old Brooks B72 saddle with saddle soap and given it several light treatments with neatsfoot oil. It looks much better but some of the old cracks in the leather are so deep I do not see much hope of it holding up to actual use. Though I would like to keep the bike as original as possible I am thinking of replacing the B72 with a B66, I might get a smoother ride with the coil springs on that model.

I have had both wheels on my truing stand. The rear was "close enough" and the front took only minimal tweaking to bring it in line. I have been "pouring" Marvel oil through the hubs and spinning them regularly in an effort to clean the "dust" out of them. They seem to spin quite freely but the rear coasts longer than the front so I'm thinking of dis assembly and cleaning of the front axle. I also plan to use a heavier oil (20W?) once the Marvel oil has done it's thing. What oil is everybody else using?

I dis assembled the head set yesterday and managed not to loose any of the 50 tiny ball bearings that poured out. There was no wear and no grease residue in there at all. I did reasemble it using wheel bearing grease both to help control the individual ball bearings and to provide lubrication. There was no evidence that there had ever been any grease of any kind applied to these bearings at the factory.

I finally built up the nerve to give the cottered cranks a go. I managed to press the first cotter (drive side) out with an old C-clamp but the second one totaled out the C-clamp and never budged. I remembered seeing some pictures of cotter presses while reading up on cottered cranks so I attempted my own version which closely resembles one that I had seen (thanks to whoever it was that posted pictures of the homemade cotter press). My version used slightly different material as I, once again, made it entirely with "stock" from my scrap bin. The press looks a bit crude (ran out of that Sail Blue Krylon on the last project) but it worked a treat. Pressed the cotter out with no hesitation or damage to the cotter so I was able to reuse both cotters with their fancy "R" nuts.

The "grease" in the bottom bracket was dried up to the point of almost being dusty. It rotated quite freely and I had almost talked myself out of even messing with it but as it turns out it was in need of attention. It was an uneventful task to clean and reassemble the bottom bracket and cranks with the exception of spending an inordinate amount of time looking for that one ball bearing which somehow found it's way to the magnet on the bottom side of the tray.......

Just for grins I cut some strips from an old bit of latigo leather that I had laying around. Added brass snaps (press studs) and............instant hub shiners.

Now, if those tires will just come in today I should be able to get this thing ready to go.

My version of the homemade cotter press and my "first class" hub shiners.