Raleigh Supercourse - Found and Upgraded

[jamesdak]

So, like I do each year I went out and found a cheap local bike to fix up as a Christmas donation to the local bike Coop. This time it was pretty grimy 1990ish Raleigh Supercourse that had been listed locally for months. These bikes have a bonded frame where the main tubes are aluminum and rest is steel. This was actually a low end model for that year and came with Shimano Exage 400EX/Action parts. Drove about an hour to see the bike and they had to bring it down out of the barn where it was hanging. Dusty and grimy but seemed fairly nice under the dirt. Got it home and weighed it right away. 24 lbs, 14 Ozs. This shot was taken the minute I got it home and unloaded it.



Cleaned it up and found a pretty much mint bike underneath the dirt with components that showed very little wear at all.

Original plan was to just service it up and move it on to the Coop. Took off the rack and some other stuff and put on a better set of 7 speed wheels with some 700 x 30c tires.



Then with farther consideration I decided to fully upgrade it using parts on hand. Wound up going with a mix of Ultegra and Dura Ace parts as well as a nice set of Dura Ace /Open Pro wheels.

This is how I finished up the bike. Pretty much the only parts stock are the the odd sized 25.8 seatpost, the headset, and the handlebars. The bike now weighs 20 lbs, 12 ozs as in the picture below. That's a lot of weight loss!







Antares R3 saddle for now with the seatpost cleaned up and polished.


I debated on bar tape color and a lot of folks suggested blue.


Black and white finishing tape adds a nice touch.


Dura Ace RD.


Dura Ace FR and Ultegra crankset with rings that match up well to the bike.