[Closed] We all had a Raleigh at some point, didn't we?

First bike was a magbuster. Awesome little bike

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Lacked a rear brake so skids were achieved by ramming your foot on the rear tyre.

Mag Burner, here's me looking my usual happy self

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Replaced by this which I still have

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A burner with the fancy oval 'competition' tubing. I can't remember why oval tubing was a desirable thing, but it hurt more when you landed on it.

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Just look at that !

weighed a tonne. wend downhill (on tarmac) great.

Tomahawk - gashed a hole in my leg with the inverted V scar still on my calf 40 years later.

Tour de France - 3 speed racer that struggled up the Devon cols

Avanti - 531 rigid MTB with original XT components 8)

Yak, sounds like an Aero Burner.

Could be. I can't remember. Maybe an aero 'night' burner as it was mostly black with a bit of red. Loved it. We had a dirt track 200m from my house - happy days 🙂

I had a blue Budgie and a green Strika. Saw a Budgie in a museum a while back and couln't believe how tiny it was 😆 Mine used to make the most incredible noise because of all the loose mudguards, like the crazy frog...

And then, a Raleigh Marauder Index. Yeah you heard me, Index. None of your 15 speed pov-spec friction shift for this bad boy, SIS all the way. Well, half the way, it was still friction on the front. And special ltd edition paint:

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This isn't mine but it totally could have been, I guess they came with that bottle and cage or something.

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Winner! First 'racer'. Happy times.

Ooh, I had a

Chipper (I properly loved this bike)
Tomahawk
Strika
boggo red and yellow Burner (stolen 🙁 )
Chrome burner with CWs! (also stolen 🙁 )
Ultra Burner, traded for a 1993 GT Outpost BITD

Jumpers, goalposts, etc...

First bike was something my Grandad found in a skip.
So was my second, but it was a Raleigh Chipper:

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Then I got my brother's hand-me-down (he'd had new):

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I did my cycling proficiency on that

Then I got my first new bike, a Pacer:
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Images all taken from Google, I doubt we've got any.

Then when I was 12 I progressed to my first mtb, a Diamndback Topanga, and have never gone back to Raleigh. Although I lusted after a Lizard for a while...

Haven't seen one on the thread so far - I give you the Raleigh Dirt Cross:

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The slenderness of the bottom of the fork legs is amazing. Did these things used to bend or were they made out of Kryptonite?

ir_bandito - Member
First bike was something my Grandad found in a skip.

I'm so glad I'm not alone with that.

@CFH (and anyone else who is intetested) here is more on the Rodeo:

http://hawx.co.uk/chopper/homepage.ntlworld.com/catfoodrob/choppers/history/history10.html

I was never a member of the Raleigh club until a couple of months ago.

I grew up in a neighbourhood that had a communal Raleigh chopper though. We all had our own bikes, mine were all Halfords and Townsend rubbish, But this chopper just used to hang around. I guess it was someones older brothers or something. It was too small, rubbish as a bike but great fun.

OMG a Mk3 Cortina! Yesss!

RSW 16 proto bikepacker...hub gears, luggage, hub dynamo, fat tyres... Used to go miles (well it felt like it), on and off road. My racer that replaced it didn't half feel fast though.

[url= https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2849/33346674785_1fe2031ae1_m.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2849/33346674785_1fe2031ae1_m.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/SNJqCH ] by -crewlie-[/url]

Rubbish photo, but it's the best I could get.

Raleigh Module 3. Can't get a photo to work on my phone but amazingly there are some out there.

Can't figure out why 3 speed hub geared road bikes aren't still a thing!

One of my first bikes was a Grifter, in blue, with Kellogg's spoke reflectors and probably some holofoil stickers of some description. After a few other nondescript bikes and the theft of my awesome CB Vantage I had a Yukon, Reynolds tubing and 21 gears FTW. I later had a super burner, I'm pretty sure it ended up in the tip eventually. No one would have ever of thought they'd be collectible back then.

I also had a mk3 cortina a coup,e of years ago. Sold it last year to someone who can do a better job of restoring it than I

I still have one of these, because i cant be arsed advertising it, it sits in the garage mostly, that said i had a play on it 3 days back, hanging on the wall for 3 year and the obly issue was sticky sturmey archer hub
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No-one had Vektar(gh!)!? What the heck was a 'Zytel console' ? Early 80s landfills must've resembled a Battlestar Galactica/Buck Rogers/Knight-Rider battle-scene mashup

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OMG a Mk3 Cortina! Yesss!

That Cortina got me a ride in a Police Car when I was 8

One night it got nicked and dumped in Salford, police found it, came and took Mum and Me up to go and collect it. Mum was upset so a Bobby drove it back and we got a lift back in the Police car. I'm sure the Police car was a Escort Xr3i

I remember the car having a new ignition barrel then mum scrubbed it with bleach as she felt it was dirty after being nicked.

Hand-me-down Tomahawk, followed by a Grifter XL.

Bristled with envy at cousins who had Choppers and Strikas.

Roughly 40 years ago this year I learnt to ride on a Raleigh Dart. My brother had a Jeep.
Another one whose parents were so out of touch they thought a teenager in the 80s would be happy on a shopper bike. Still managed to go mountain biking on it though 🙂

I've just found two bricks and a plank of wood in the bushes. I'm making a jump in the back street...

I've just found two bricks and a plank of wood in the bushes. I'm making a jump in the back street...

Three Important Raleighs

1. Chopper ( I had a Tomahawk first but the Chopper was the Important one )

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2. Raleigh Montana light Blue my First Mountain bike, bought by my wife. Got stolen after a few months 🙁 but got me started in Mountain biking never looked back.

3. Raleigh (name unknow ) that I bought for my Dad, we had a great ride together because of this bike about a year before he died.

and I have always thought the same.......

The top tube of a [s]Strika [/s] Chopper is not a plum-forgiving landing zone. Amazed I had children, really.

 

VEKTAR, yes! Didn't they do a white one too? Always wanted one but had a red burner instead.

Raleigh Strika was my first proper bike. I'll also be forever grateful to this bike (not my photo) for getting me into biking and me going from a 17 stone unhealthy bugger to the (relatively) svelte 12 1/2 stone cyclist I am now. Still in the garage - planning to give it to a charity when I get round to it - need the space...
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kayla1 - Member

I've just found two bricks and a plank of wood in the bushes. I'm making a jump in the back street...

Was it by the hedge pron and white dog poo?

RSW (a hand me down) ..had my first bike related injury on this, 3 stitches above my eye.

Tomahawk - came off on this giving my mate a chuckie and hitting a bump in the road!

Grifter XL - Broke a girls wrist as she was holding onto the saddle to stop me riding off, so had to get physical - Tour De Kinver Winning machine! 😉

... I have a lovely purple Raleigh 92-93 Dyna-Tech racer that is weeks away from its first ride in anger..pics will follow.

I never had these posh kid's bikes. When I first started commuting I bought a green, steel framed Raleigh road bike 2nd hand from the Freeads. Was great, until I snapped the chainstay pulling away from traffic lights in Portsmouth city centre. Still remember that weird "my bike's broken" feeling. Halfords warranteed it though, cos it had a lifetime guarantee on the frame! The replacement was a horrible, yellow, aluminium beast which I ebayed without using.

Red Chipper

Sliver Striker with a 7 number plate on the handle bars ... guess which bday I got that for ?

and a Night Burner

But I remember the little kid next door had a Budgie that was ace for wheelies... and the older lads had Grifters most of which had the front of the foam seat snapped off.

My sister learned to ride on one of these:

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Then it got passed down to me. I broke the frame clean in two trying to wheelie it.

I then got one of these:

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Anybody else heard this "Poem"

Ride a Raleigh
Ride a Wreck
Ride a Raleigh
Break your neck

?????

Yay, a Raleigh thread! I had the same MTB Team as [url= http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/we-all-had-a-raleigh-at-some-point-didnt-we/page/3?replies=126#post-8338203 ]simmy[/url], it was my first full-sized bike, and I rode it round the Peak for a couple of years before I managed to save up for a Breezer Storm. It carried me all over the local hills, and then when we got bored and wanted to go further, over Holme Moss and all the way to Edale, down Jacob's Ladder and The Beast and back via Cut Gate (although I think I did have to carry it for some of that lot when my chain broke). The 28x28 bottom gear got me fit surprisingly fast. The tyres were bloody dreadful, and the brakes were plastic, it weighed a ton and I learned all sorts of useful mechanical stuff by taking it apart and putting it back together. I definitely got my money's worth out of it, but somehow still managed to sell it on for a whole £75 quid to finance the last bit of the Breezer.

A few years later I won a trip round the Raleigh factory through school, that was fascinating, although in retrospect the whole place had a bit of an air of a company that didn't really know what it was doing anymore. Massive site, huge amount of infrastructure and skill, but stuck two or three decades behind where it really needed to be to compete with the far east. They were tinkering with titanium and bonded frames and that, but the main volume production was clearly just dying out underneath them. Bit of a shame really.

I had 2:
First was a corsa, lovely 531 frame and full 105.
[img] http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/download/file.php?id=128286 [/img]
Which I bought with money earned selling logs by the roadside that I'd split by my own 14 year old hands. Did a 300 mile trip round Wales on it aged 16 with a bar bag, napsack and one water bottle. Stayed in Youth hostels, wore same jeans all week. Stank when I got back. It got pinched in the first year at uni and the insurance money bought this:
[img] http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/download/file.php?id=328433 [/img]
Which I didn't like as much but kept a few years. Biopace and awful hideous graphics. That saddle!
It would have been new in 1989 and I snapped the frame in about 1993 after too many kerbs were popped off. Got a new frame on warranty and kept it but barely rode it after I bought my first mtb in 1994. It got given to a neighbour about 10 years ago who was after something to ride to work on. He made the mistake of taking it to a bike shop for a service and was told it wasn't worth servicing so he skipped it. I'd have had it back off him if he'd offered. Pillock.
Images off retrobike which just makes me wish I'd kept the second one even more.

Still got mine. 1983 531c Competion but it's Burner blue. I went to Bangor Normal College that year and our head of department, John Brailsford (Daves dad) had some long standing arrangement with what ever the special products dept was called then. Every year the Outdoor ed students had the chance to buy a nice Raleigh. None of them were exactly the same although all the same colour but different each year. Mine was Campag equiped with Mavic GP4's and Clement tubs.
SS Stu, are you sure you didn't live in the FoD as a a kid? I had a Grifter with moped forks. Mine were NSU Quickly ones though. Leading link jobbies.

A 25" Raleigh Medale 10 speed when I was a kid, subsequently hammerited and cowhorned for student use.

Bought one of those Raleigh Lizards in 1990 to ride to the local bouldering crags, and realised I was enjoying riding the rough trails between the crags more than the climbing...so when it got nicked I put the insurance money towards a Raleigh Monsoon, 33lb of rigid steel fun. Not sure where it stood in the 'M' named series of early 90s Raleigh mountain bikes, but it had 21 speed Suntour Accushi(f)t gearing and cost me a staggering £350. I agonised over spending that much on a mere bicycle for a couple of weeks but, once bought, I loaded it onto a train and rode it over High Street in winter from Staveley to Pooley Bridge - and never looked back.

The TV programme looks interesting, thanks for the heads up.

I misremembered.
It was a strada not a delta
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Also had a fiat strada at the same time. That had less metal in it than the bike.

First "proper" bike (not a hand me down) was a red Chopper. I loved the warning on the seat that said "this cycle is only designed to carry one person"
First MTB was a Raleigh Montage
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=raleigh+montage&oq=raleigh+mont&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.6026j0j4&client=tablet-android-lenovo&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=bkqjSkdRW7XQ5M:

Just remembered I have this pic of the day I got my Strika, complete with horn! Particularly impressed by the spaghetti legs in school shorts even though it was summer holidays at my granny's house in Devon. Check out the sandals too![img] ?efg=eyJpIjoidCJ9&oh=2640bec83f0dfcee41b11eab4dae20d9&oe=5928622B[/img]

I wish I could find a picture online of my Monsoon but it seems to have been erased from history, a casualty of the pre-digital era. It was a kind of bronze colour, 501 tubes, decked out with cut-up blue gaffer taped Karrimat in a Jeremy Ashcroft stylee. Took me all over the Lakes, Dales, Wales and my first E2E. I 'upgraded' to a Clockwork when it broke, but in fact it rode much better than the Orange.

I had a raleigh sirocco 501 and rode all over North Wales with it.
It's still at my parents place.
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Not my bike but exactly like this. Is it worth anything now?

i had quite a few when i was little...the raleigh tomahawk was my favourite...the crappy activator was the worst by a country mile!!