Practically Classics Forum

The chainwheel has Raleigh bird in its fretwork

You often see things like that at preserved railways. They don't have to be in working order (They just need to look in working order). They are just used to give a period feel.

It reminds me of a job I did. Someone was selling an old "Allen" aluminium bike, with period 1970s Campag kit. Aluminium is more prone to fatigue than steel and so long as a steel frame isn't rusty, they will go on for years. This old Allen was a bit too old for comfort (They were lugged frames and glued together) and was simply being bought by a collector, who had no plans to ride it. The old wheel rims were anodised in a matching blue but had both been flat spotted. The vendor asked me to build them back on to the old hubs and explained that the out of round didn't matter.

I decided to put shorter spokes in where the rim was flat spotted, so that the spokes wouldn't look loose. It worked out rather well and apart from the obvious, the wheels were true. Purely out of interest, I checked the spokes with the tension meter and to my amazement, they were OK . If wheels are to be used, having well balanced spoke tensions makes them reliable.