Andrew Gorman
Cruisin' on my Bluebird
A few weeks ago I went to look at a Raleigh roadster I saw on craigslist- it was only about 5 blocks from the house. It was cheap and it followed me home. Turned out to be a Raleigh Gazelle Safety Roadster from 1938 with a Sturmey Archer AW 3 speed. The cranks were stripped at the pedal ends, and after an extortionate quote from the local bike shop to rethread them, I went ahead and did it myself with the Unior pedal bushing set. It's a great tool and easy to use. If you have stripped 9/16 threads I recommend it highly! The handlebars were really rough on this bike, and removing the silver barn paint revealed mostly rust and peeling chrome. I've been wanting a slack angle road bike and decided to use up what I had on hand. This was a perfect excuse to get a pair of SOMA Lauterwasser bars! Other than a general tune up and clean up all I had to do was make the existing rod brakes work with cables from the drop bars. That was lot easier than I expected. The previous owner kept the dried out and un-useable Brooks saddle (Them things is worth MONEY he sez...) so I put on a B-66 I've been curating for at least 24 years. Took it for a spin yesterday and it works pretty well, I still need to do some adjustments on the brakes but I can see why sportier bikes in the 1930's used calipers. I've been having fun with this one.
