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1948 Raleigh Dawn Tourist

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SirMike1983

Riding a '38 Autocycle Deluxe
I am rebuilding a 1948 Raleigh Dawn Tourist. The bicycle combines the Raleigh Sports/Superbe frame, 26 x 1-3/8 wheels, dunlop rims, and rod brakes. It's a hybrid of the 28 inch wheel roadsters and the 26 inch wheel Sports light roadsters. It's a 23 inch 'tall' frame. I had to replace the fenders, but that was not too hard. I now have everything for this bike except the brake shoes, which I'll have to buy online. Hub is an AW with 1948 date code and the old-style, long arm handle bar shifter.

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Nice! I don't see too many examples of the Dawn Tourist, they seem much more uncommon than the Superbe. Does your trigger use the crimped sleeve cable or the small barrel end?
 
It takes a soldered disc end cable, similar to what some brakes now use, but with a smaller disc. The mounting is different from the later click shifters in that the cable slides way up and then is hooked into place so that the disc fits into a small, circular cut in the center of the shifter. Adjustment side is fixed length barrel. I am going to replace the cable with a modified brake cable.
 
the rod brakes are the biggest difference from the more common Superbe, and makes the bike totally cool. Also, dyno lighting on the Superbe, and a different color from black. In 1948, the Dawn Tourist was one step down form the Superbe Tourist - neither model continued for long, though the Superbe Sport continued as long as they were building bikes in Nottingham.
http://www.kurtkaminer.com/TH_raleigh_cat_us48.html
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Raleigh used confusingly similar names for all these little variations of bikes. Some people go by the model number, which the above catalog pages give you. We think of a Superbe as a particular model bike in the US, but the truth is that 'Superbe' tended to denote a deluxe version of a particular type of Raleigh model. It's not just one model bike, but a deluxe variation of almost any bike.

The 'Superbe' we see in the US is actually the Superbe Sports: a high-end version of the cable brake Raleigh Sports bike with 26 inch wheels.

The Dawn Tourist has the same frame and wheel size, but rod brakes.It's like if you built a Raleigh Sports but with rod brakes and a chain case.

The "Superbe Tourist" seen above is a high-end version of the DL-1 (sometimes called the Raleigh "Tourist") with 28 inch wheels and bolt-on seat stays. It's like a deluxe DL-1.
 
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I ran into the side stand clearance issue on my DL-1 and came up with a modification to allow using a Greenfield stand. If you are interested, let me know and I'll post details.
 
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