I've just found one of these in the street near my house (flat tyres, no lock, leaned against a railing where people generally leave their rubbish) so I've claimed it. It's in really good nick.

I've googled for more info on it, but can't find much at all. It's obviously a base model as all the components look pretty cheap. It's got Shimano SIS indexed gears with plastic shifters and Weinmann brakes, callipers and rims. It seems to be steel, but there is nothing on it to say what kind of steel. It ways loads compared to my modern ally roadbike.

The question is this: Should I use it for the basis of my first fixed build, or should I sell it complete and put the money towards something else to build into a fixed?

Thanks.

even if you strip it, stick a single speed free wheel on it and leave the front brake with a £10 dirty harry you could probably sell it to some hipster for a lot more than with everything on it how it currently looks, no?

I mean in a sense with that paint job it's very much the poor man's Dave Yates special, once owned by Dogsballs and now by Phasergunalex.

You could peel the "LEIGH" off of the "Raleigh" decals, stencil some new letters, take them to a local transfer printer and you could rebadge it as a Ray Yates or whatever. that would fetch a bomb on ebay, specially if you highlighted the "unknown steel tubing (Reynolds 531??)" aspect.

Some sound advice there. Remind me never to buy anything from you two off ebay!

ha! well..i reckon you should take a good look at what useable parts you've got and use it as a build.. you might only get forty quid for it if you sold it and that would soon get swallowed up. Taking all the extraneous stuff off is really good fun too, you won't get that simple pleasure if you look around for a frame afterwards.

be interesting to see what you do with it. In theory this could be a really cheap, bargain conversion. I'm picking a bike up from an Uncle soon for nowt, no idea what is is yet but similarly looking forward to it.

@ Ward-a-Mercy. Remember not to buy anything off those two on e-bay, won't you? Thanks.

Platini you are funny.

Why thankyou.

Id use it as a touring bike till the gears wore out.

then id do what pjs and cuppa T are reccomending. Take the bits off, play around with it, you could make something cool for sure.

is lube involved? cos if it is they'd take ages to wear through.

This post is directed at both skeletonboy and Platini.

skeletonboy - I don't think I'll be doing any touring on this, I'll stick to my existing roadbike! It's a little on the heavy side, feels like it's made from lead pipe.

Just looked up this thread im moving from restoring raleigh burners and want a fixie as ive moved to London so retro raleigh is obvious choice for me, i think a scorpio, banana or team is for me

I don't understand the point in bumping this particular thread really...

sorry mate but im a newbie and have to make my 5 post quota somewhere and it may as well be a relevant thread rather than 5 random posts, no?

Seeing as this post re-surfaced recently, I thought I'd stick up a picture of the bike as it is now:

no. you don't have to make your 5 post quota - if there's nothing of value to say then say nothing...

1+

if you have something to says, then says something, like hello for instance, or bonjour if you're french, whatever greeting you like, but if you have nothing, fuck off, harsh but fair.

the forum police are watching

its got to be on an existing thread tho mate so tell me how that works, i have to trawl through and find existing threads that say what i want to say and add on to that, but if its outwith what you consider an acceptable time scale then i shouldnt?!
5 posts mate how many times can i say hello, maybe i should say it in 5 different languages.
im sure you would have had something to say if id just written on 5 random recent posts,
thanks for forcing me to reply, taking up another of my nursery 5 and bumping this thread again....


ps that scorpio is lookin sweet
good job