How to Build a Bike in Postwar Britain

[mtbdudex]

cool to watch

How to Build a Bike in Postwar Britain

As Europe rebuilt itself after WWII, the Raleigh Bicycle Company's popularity exploded—in large part because their bikes were faster, stronger, and lighter than anything else on the market. Heck, by 1946, Raleigh and other English bicycle makers were responsible for 95 percent of the bikes on American roadways. This short film explains how Raleighs were designed and built.

[Paul T]

Cool video. I grew up in Nottingham, the home of Raleigh. I lived there from the mid seventies until moving away after university in the mid nineties. From about 1982 I lived less than a mile from the Raleigh and Sturmey Archer factory. They were still producing from that factory but this declined as production shipped overseas. The whole site became student accommodation for the University of Nottingham after I moved away. Sad really. I had few local built Raleighs as a kid.

[HKEKfreak]

I need to call those ladies in the tire department the next time I get a flat.

[pharus]

So that is where the term "bottom bracket" comes from. In the video, they show it being crafted, it is actually the piece of frame that the other frame tubes connect to, with a sideways tube for the crank spindle to go through. Somehow today, we have changed the term bottom bracket from meaning the frame piece containing the spindle, to the actual spindle/bearing itself.

[deuxdiesel]

Thanks for posting this- most fun post from anyone in months! Hmmm, steel frame, single speed, large wheels....

[mtbdudex]

I actually was fascinated seeing the bike build process.
Can you imagine all the toxins going thru those workers bodies?

Yea, the "girls" all looked so pretty and hair curly and neat in the video, and 50 seconds to mount a tube and tyre, pretty decent.

Had a Raleigh road bike "10 speed", bought new 1979, kept it till mid 1990's.
Because of the Raleigh name, my first MTB bike in 1995 was a Raleigh with a RockShok front fork.
I paid $550 for it (MGM bikes? Novi & I-96, they went out of business) and felt that was an expensive bike at the time
(before becoming addicted to biking again)