Beat's Custom Raliegh Lite Refurbish

We had the priveledge of fully refurbishing a Raleigh LTD-3 frame from the 70s for a dapper young professional man. We put on new 3 speed wheel-set with aluminum 26 X 13/8" rims, new cotter-less crank-set and cartridge bottom bracket, and vintage aluminum handlebars. We re-tapped the bottom bracket shell of the frame allowing the modern BB and cranks to be installed. This process is fun and takes full advantage of the great old British steel that these old frames are made out of.

Notice the MKS sylvan touring pedals and the modern crank-set. We installed refurbished old Japanese alloy calipers which stop the bicycle better than the steel calipers that came on the bike ever could. As well replacing all the Whitsworth with metric should go much appreciated by any mechanic that works on this bike.

With all these Japanese parts we had to reinforce the British roots with a genuine Brooks Saddle. The alloy post-style seat pillar and old Sturmey-Archer pulley cable-guide serve to lighten the bike up and reduce friction in the shifting cables.

This photo does not do justice to the beautiful alloy Phillips French three-speed bars and sweet clear cablehousing guiding the controls. Keeping the bike and rider cleaner and happier and lighter are some Planet Bike Cascadia fenders in black. Light for a three-speed is an understatement. This bike's brand new Sturmey-Archer three-speed hub shifts like a charm and the bike flies the way these were meant to glide through traffic and up bridges.

Stay tuned for the next installment where we feature a sweet conversion of a Trek road bike and the Raleigh Colt that was reborn as a Pacific North West tattoo parlor shuttle bike.

race to the sun

We have several new additions to the formula. The signage is going up, the crapshack is becoming a brick shithouse, and the brick walls are coming together as a strong foundation for the building. We have some really fine Keirin bicycles coming from Japan. The Artisan behind the Vivelo name has agreed to produce his bikes for us under the name Kinfolk. For furthur details see wegotways.com.

The windows and a handicapped ramp are the last touches that we shall be doing while we are open for business. If anyone has a line on some Glaze to install windows, let us know.

We also have the flat-bed work-trike of the century here that we use to transport materials from the neighborhood suppliers. Photos soon. Bring us by your repairs now so we can get them ready for springtime.

D

A Start

Litfuse Cyclery, this being our first blog post let us introduce you to our situation, check back often as we will keep it updated weekly with how the process of transforming this space into a bike shop will go down. Locaded in an abandoned chicken down-feather plant located in what was formelry considered Clinton Hill and now is claimed by the Bedford Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn is a 4 story red-brick warehouse building at 409 willoughby avenue. The mortar is turning to dust from age and abuse inside and out. Floors of massive timbers hewn from the 19th century old-growth forests of New England. These ancient forests nurtured strong and long-lasting timbers that are the back-bone of the building. Years of abuse and neglect turned this noble down feather sanitizing factory into a dangerously dusty, filthy, rat-infested, mess with dead pipes covering the ceiling; covered in feather dust and chicken lice exoskeletons and rat fecal chloroform dust. The basement was like something out of Saw with the exception that the saw movie sets were much cleaner and didn't have the sheer volume of dusty trash. In the real world when old factories are abandoned they sell the valuable heavy machinery and replace them with their trash All the drain pipes leaked into the basement, there is still a swamp there after we fixed most of the leaks in the plumbing. But the amazing thing was when we started to remove the garbage. It kicked up a feather/dust storm. It was like a blizzard with muddy rivers in the basement. We took several tons of metals to the scrap yard and over 90 cubic yards of dust heavy garbage. Those dumpsters aren't cheap so we squeezed every last drop out of each cubic yard. A few tenants in the building have brought their bikes by but we are not at full capacity as a repair shop yet. We have no windows, the bathroom is not finished and the store still is quite dusty. We have repaired the floors extensively and cleared space for storage and workspace and hope to be open in 2 weeks.

  Bathroom under construction Damian, Angel, and Jerry the three man team behind the renovation/construction.