TC: if the 2006 brakeless fixie dream included tubeless tires, I ain’t never woulda woken up
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Road tubeless seems like a pain in the ass, has your experience been good?
Either way I obviously can’t go for that 'cause they don’t make tanwall/red/black tires in road tubeless as far as I know, and that’s an essential part of my way-too-matchy vibes.
my experience has been great. many thousands of miles on road tubeless so far, and the only flat was because the tire was basically down to the threads. yeah it’s a pain to get them set up in the first place, but just do one more wrap of tape than you thought you needed, and it will work.
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damn that is nice. got more details on the bike?
gracias. I’ve never gone down the serial number road with it, but I know it’s a Raleigh Team Ti Professional Track.
Seems like they were part of a program back in the day where you could order frames custom-built to team specs. It’s not Titanium despite the name, not sure what that actually stands for.
At some point Joe Bell did an unusually bad job repainting it. The decals are just stuck on over the paint like fuckin amateur hour lol.
Rides stiff but also quite comfy, somehow. Did a hundred-miler on it a few years back and felt fine afterwards.
Does the serial start with “SB”?
Also with Raleighs, “TI” doesn’t mean titanium, it means “Tube Investments” 
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Nah, starts with an F. F5711, to be specific. Which now that I’m looking at it doesn’t really match up with how their system worked at any point that I can see. Exciting!
According to Sheldon that would indicate a 1971 frame. Probably carlton. My 1973 RRA has a G + 4 digit number like that and also the “CC” cutout on the bottom bracket.
1967 - 1973
Yet another number system was introduced in 1966. This new system applied to the high-end (i.e. Reynolds 531) frames, and involved the placing of a character at the beginning of the serial number. The character began at the start of the alphabet, and indicated year of manufacture. Detail about the numerals that follow the alphabet are sketchy, and are presumably sequential serial numbers of some kind.
oh now that’s super neat. I figured late 70’s not early 70’s. Very cool.
It means that downtube decal is definitely way wrong lol.
Hah, wow Joe Bell was really on a good ol California acid trip when he was working on this fuckin thing I guess.
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That’s OK, weird bikes are weird. Someone sandpaper’d off the logos on my RRA 
Those things came in a few styles but the lettering should definitely have this font:
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Definitely different seat cluster on those ones though. Mine has the wraparound stays.
Any other reason to suspect JB didn’t actually paint it? I’ve never heard anyone say anything but positive remarks on his work
Not necessarily. It’s certainly possible I suppose, but the actual laying down of the paint looks pretty nice, and the “JB San Diego” text on the stay is painted on and very nice and crisp.
Certainly possible that he was just misinformed and/or client insisted on specific scheme and ordering decals later.
turns out I forgot some stuff. This is the guy who had it before me:
I remember very specifically because of that ugly-ass crabon fork lol
I’m gonna go with
Certainly possible that he was just misinformed and/or client insisted on specific scheme and ordering decals later.
The decal on your downtube, IIRC, wasn’t ever used pre-1980.
I’m assuming you have a standard “The Raleigh Nottingham England” headbadge? They dropped the “The” around the same time they adopted that new logo.
Probably this colorway then
Got the bike locally (San Diego) was told it was a 1972 raleigh original color was blue?
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Yeah, my suspicion as well now that I dug that up. Lugwork seems to match.
Shame about the loss of the chrome lugs, but I do like the red with the black vertical tubes better than the kinda klunky panels.
Guy that I used to live next to had a fleet of black and red SBDUs
Best color scheme for sure.