5 minutes to go before the auction ended and bidding intensified. People wanted this bike. I wanted this bike. I upped my maximum bid to ?260 but then saw someone else was close to this, so upped it again. “Bid with your head not your heart” didn’t enter into it. With only 7 seconds remaining, I was fairly confident I wouldn’t be outbid with my new maximum of ?280. justonemoretry (481) must have autobid ?275.01 with only 5 seconds to go but it wasn’t enough to beat my ?280 max bid. Still, I wouldn’t be happy until I saw that I was the winning bidder. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. It was tense but then I saw the lovely “Congratulations, you have won the item” message. Sweet! New Bike!

I had to wait patiently until Saturday to pick it up. Luckily I had a contractor party on Thursday and got well drunk care of Danny’s credit card (cheers mate!). On Friday it was drinks again at Imbibe to celebrate Shaun and Kat’s engagement. Arrived home at the reasonable hour of 4am after Mal and I passed out on the night bus.. so Saturday I was up bright and early.. at 11am 😉

Sans food and drink I headed over to Clapton in E5 (Central Line then “one” NR, for you trainspotters :P).

“qorflan” the Seller opened up the funky bike box in his driveway revealing an old frame of some sort, a sweet new Condor Pista and the Raleigh. The Raleigh looked much sexier in person than the ebay photos hinted at. It was more “red” for a start (and red is faster kiddies so, bonus!).

The ebay blurb:

An early 80?s ? (serial WL9002869) Nottingham made Raleigh Team TI bike. Currently built as a fast commuter/courier bike with vintage Colnago fork and front brake, I will include the original 531 TI forks and 3TT stem and bars for use as a track machine.

This is a classic bike in excellent condition ? a few scratches but no dents or dings. As built- it’s a practical (no overlap/165mm crank) super tight and fast fixed gear road bike. With limited effort it could be built for it’s original track duties. Please note the saddle is not included in the sale.

We spend about 20 minutes trying to remove the Time pedals (which I let him keep as I wont use them). In the end, after breaking or bending a number of his tools, qorflan takes apart one of his multi-tools and threads another allen key through one end to get more leverage. After spraying the pedal with WD40 and giving a few more painful heaves we are rewarded with a loud “CRACK” and the pedal is finally detached from the crank! Woo! On go my SPDs (from the GT) and the Selle Italia Trans Am saddle I’d bought off ebay ages ago. I put the original bar and stem and original fork in my Crumpler, handed over the cash, wheeled the new machine outside and then rode off into the sunset..

Well, not quite, but I did ride the new steed around London for the next 3 hours. Right through the guts of town.. and even tackled the evil Oxford St. and Piccadilly Circus. If I was paranoid about stupid peds stepping out in front of the GT I was triply paranoid about them doing it in front of the Raleigh. Sure I have a front brake but I wasn’t using it, save for Notting Hill downhill fearing a light change. The seat-clamp bolt was pretty rounded and the seat-post ended up slipping down scrapping some of the label off. Nevermind, it got me home. I then rode to Ealing Cycles and asked about a seat-clamp bolt, which they provided me for ?3. Not quite as nice as the original but it will do for now.

Of course, at this stage I’d still not stopped for food or water so was kinda, um, how you say? Fscked? Yeah. I’d ridden back home after fitting the new clamp bolt and was about to go out again to finally score some food and drink and noticed I’d done my famous and oft-repeated trick of leaving my wallet somewhere. FSCK! Called the bike shop and “yes, we have it”. They closed in 3 minutes so I jumped back on the fix (no socks, gloves, helmet or bag) and hooned over.

“It was just here.. and we’ve had tonnes of people through too..”

“Sweet mate, thanks very much” I offered to the bloke who’d saved my wallet.

Back home, scoffed some food and drink and then went out for another night on the piss with Simo, Dj and crew. I ended up bailing early.. chink in my alcoholic armour you ask?

No.. I was being the gentleman and taking poor Mal home. She was barely awake when we left the um.. *hangs head* Shebu Walkie (why do we always end up here?!).

My first bit of Colnago kit which Seller paid ~?75 for in an earlier auction. Mal likes these.

I don’t think I’ll be getting mudguards in here, come winter!

Watch out for the weirdos in London that want your bike!

531 Reasons Why.. Steel is real!

I actually find trackstands more difficult on a track bike!

Click this image for Raleigh Team Track gallery.

Other Raleigh Info:

According to retroraleighs.com – dating this frame is actually a mid-year, 1979 model. We almost share birthdays!

“The Raleigh Team bikes are another story. The famous red, yellow, and black bikes were important machines in the world of racing. An early N.R. example with 531 tubing is worth around $1000. The 753 model with S.R. goodies is a major collectible bike. Figure that one with original paint in guideline condition is worth about $1,300. There were some 531 team track frames in the late 70’s that were gorgeous. One of these in really nice condition with N.R. parts should be worth about $850 to $900.”

from: www.sheldonbrown.com – raleigh

“In 1974, an entirely different numbering system was introduced for the higher end (531 and subsequently 753) Raleighs. Serial numbers should begin with a “W”, which stands for Worksop, the facility that produced theses frames. This is followed by another alphabet. This alphabet indicates the fortnight in which the frame was built (i.e. A = 1st fortnight, B = 2nd, etc.). The third character is always a numeral. It indicates the year of manufacture, the decade being assumed (i.e. “4” could be ’74 or ’84; it is up to the interpretor to know enough to tell if the frame is from the 70’s or 80’s). What then follows is a series of numbers. At this point, these appear to be some sort of sequence, but this has not been substantiated.”

from: retroraleighs.com – dating

retroraleighs.com – raleigh history or tony hadland – raleigh history