A few months ago, Kevin Ryan contacted Cycle SuperStore regarding a restoration project. Buried in his back garden shed, was his old 1987 Raleigh 653 Race, which he wanted to bring back to life. With the help of Cycle SuperStore mechanics, Martin Fagan and Lincoln Harper, this restoration project became a reality.
Kevin had bought the bike back in 1989 from a bike shop in Bray and had regularly used the bike up to four years ago. After a minor accident, the bike had been placed in storage in the garden shed.
Martin had to remove the old Shimano group set and the old ‘Mavic Open Pro’ wheels, before getting underway with the restoration
The Raleigh frame after the Mavic wheels and Shimano groupset have been removed
First on Martin’s list of jobs, was to remove the small amount of rust that was dotted around the frame. After removing the rust and flaky paint, Martin sprayed a lacquer over the bike to seal up the rust and restore the paint. Kevin had requested the bike keep its old school look
The next job Martin had to tackle was adapting the bike to a modern day groupset. Like bikes of the 1980’s, Kevin’s bike had it’s gear shifters on the downtube. To ensure that a modern groupset would work on the bike, Martin inserted adapters to enable the gear levers function on the drop down handle bars.
Once this was completed, it was time to attach the new Mavic Aksium wheels
and Shimano 105 Groupset
Once this groupset was put on the bike, the last job martin had to do was replace the old bar tape with Lizard Skin bar tape. In total the restoration took only a couple of weeks to complete and as you can see Kevin was delighted with the bike
Everyone in Cycle SuperStore wishes Kevin many happy years of cycling with his restored pride and joy
