When I was back home for Christmas Break, I took apart my dad's old Raleigh Rampar that he hasn't touched in 10 years, and painted it. I flew back up to school with it, slapped on a new wheelset, a new chain, EAI cog,and lockring (and now MKS Sylvan Road pedals), and here it is. Everything else is basically stock..








And what it looked like before:

Red X's

SO I assume you didnt die one the way home? looks good!

i didn't know that felt rebadged formula hubs too. everybody's doing it.

do black forumla hubs usually have the brand name printed on them?

Yay! looks good. Recommendation: change the seat out for some used specialized BG goodness from the LBS. Cheap, and INFINITELY more comfortable that that vinyl thing that looks like it was made from the upholstry from a vintage checkered cab. Voice of experience talking.

be careful with those cranks, i had a set like that, they broke where the chainring connects to the crankarm. Wouldnt want that happening at the wrong time, especially without brakes. But it looks good, i like the color, very general lee.

my black formulas say "formula"

i second that crank recommendation.
one piece crankarm/cahinring combinations like that (usually pressfit together) aren't designed to take the forces associated with fix-gear backpressure, skids and general brakeless riding.
They've been known to spontaneously explode apart at the crank/ring interface.
get yourself a new set of cranks before you die.

that's great color.
I rode a saddle like that for years, on my dads old Puch and I loved it.

mine dont

Aha, YMMV. The first time I ever rode mine, it felt like I was pooping in reverse. Not fun (unless you're into that sort of thing).

nice job! looks awesome! What a difference with the red bike it used to be.

but but but... I don't like the saddle.. apologies but no my style

Hey! I'm building an orange Raleigh conversion right now! We can start a club!

(Sorry, I'm just really antsy to finish building her.)

i third or fourth the opinion on those maxy cranks, i know for a fact sheldon had the same seperation problem as some of us have mentioned and i had the chainring thing taco on me, go to a used bin and pull out something with a removeable chainring

oh and your bike looks real nice, my bike is also orange, but mine's a crescent, orange bikes are awesome

u did that all by yourself?

Looks really nice. Tell me about the paint job. Did you strip the frame down to bare steel beforehand? What kind of paint and what kind of process did you use?

Thanks for all the comments. I'll get myself a Sugino RD ASAP, at aebikes ($53!!).

I don't feel bad getting all these parts, since they can all carry over to my "next" upgrade...probably a frame or so!

For the paintjob, I used steel wool and courser sandpaper to get rid of all the rust and smooth down the paint. It would have taken too long to remove it all, but some of it (maybe 15%) was removed anyway by the time everything was smooth.

I then used 3/4ths can of primer, wet sanded in between, and then put on half a dozen layers of orange paint. All paint used was the Rustoleum stuff. I then clearcoated it liberally.

I made one small mistake--I didn't get primer that specifically said it was made for sanding. I think this would have made it much smoother--my primer just kept coming off like powder when I did so. Oh well.

I'm pretty satisfied with the job, except that it gets nicks VERY easily. But I guess that can't really be helped..

It looks nice in the pictures, but I can see it getting gouged up on the dropouts. I think that's just the quality you tend to get with typical rattle can paint, unfortunately. The beauty is that it's cheap enough to touch up or just flat out repaint from time to time.

nice

nice conversion. i like well done conversions.

Looks like a sweet ride.

You need a brake.