Raleigh with odd Serial Number

[Doohickie]

Last fall I acquired a Raleigh DL-1 Tourist in wonderful condition and I've enjoyed riding it (well, except for the rod brakes ).

Anyway, the Sturmey Archer AW hub has a 65 12 hub date, indicating December 1965 build, so I think of the bike as a 1966 model. I looked up Sheldon Brown's Raleigh serial number dating page and checked my bike, but guess what? It doesn't match. For a bike of about 1966 there are several possibilities for what the serial number should look like:

965/6: 40814 FD (5 digits, 2 letters)
1966: 64521 FE (5 digits, 2 letters)
1966: A, followed by four numerals (1 letter, 4 digits)

So, what serial number does my Tourist have on the bottom bracket?

427

That's it. No letters, only three digits, clear as day, that's it. I've cleaned the bike pretty thoroughly a couple times, and if there was another serial number on there, I would have found it by now.

Besides the SA hub, clues to the age include- "hockey stick" chain guard with RALEIGH block letters (not italics), the same RALEIGH block letters on the downtube. It is made of 2030 tubing. It has bolt-on seat stays; the rest of the frame is lugged.

I've found one other person who has heard of a Raleigh with a three-digit serial number.

I have one theory as to how it came to be: I worked for a company where once every year or so, we would do a "tooling run" of product- make a few, then measure them to make sure the tooling is still good and everything was in tolerance, and tweak anything that might be out. My theory is that Raleigh did the same thing, and some number of the tooling run frames were built up and sold. This would actually be a good bike if that was the case- it was probably inspected to a greater level than a normal production frame.

Does anyone else have any theories?

 

[Doohickie]

I forgot to post some pics

 

[sailorbenjamin]

Have I seen you at the C+V forum?
http://www.bikeforums.net/forumdisplay.php?f=181&daysprune=1
They have some Raleigh guru's there.
There are a lot of inconsistancies in Raleigh serial numbers and sometimes just crappy stamps where not all the digits show. 65 is probably a good guess based on the looks of the thing but they didn't change much so dates are kind of academic.
Great looking bike by the way.

 

[Doohickie]

Yep... I think the thread I started when I bought this bike was "A good old Raleigh"

I just got new tires for it this weekend- Schwalbe Delta Cruisers. I got them on but haven't gotten the rest of the bike together yet (chain, fenders, brakes).

 

[Doohickie]

It probably took 12 hours of labor to change out the tires on this bike! :eek:

But they look and ride wonderfully.

I'm still looking for information about my 3-digit serial number if anyone knows....

 

[SirMike1983]

I would go with the year estimate based on the overall qualities of the frame and bicycle rather than that 3 digit number. I'm not sure why the number would be so short, outside of raw speculation. Basing the year on the decals and design would be your best bet. The hub can help too.

I have a '78 and enjoy riding it quite a bit.

 

[Doohickie]

Based on the 65 12 date code on the SA hub, I'm calling it a 1966. That hub was built when I was 3 years old.

With the block RALEIGH on both the downtube and chain guard, that clearly makes it pre-1970, when they adopted the italicized font for the logo.

My theory is this: It was a tooling run frame. I worked for a company that built parts once a year to check the tooling. They would build, measure, then tweak any of the tooling (or perhaps the product design) based on the measurements obtained off the tooling run parts. I suppose that if Raleigh did the same thing and for this particular run, the tooling was spot-on and they didn't need any tweaks, they may have simply put the tooling run frames into production.

I've been over the bike closely 3 or 4 times now and I'm quite sure there aren't any other numbers that are hiding or have been obscured by wear or anything. 427 is the only number on the frame.