# Highly fettled Raleigh Pioneer



## Frottish (7 Feb 2020)

I call it the urban assault rustbucket!


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## snorri (7 Feb 2020)

It doesn't look like anything like my Raleigh Pioneer, but then I'm not planning any urban assaults


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## AndyRM (7 Feb 2020)

Very Mad Max!


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## SkipdiverJohn (7 Feb 2020)

snorri said:


> It doesn't look like anything like my Raleigh Pioneer



Doesn't look anything like my ones either! (yes, I have more than one Pioneer)

Judging by the amount of seatpost sticking out, the OP would have been better starting off with a 23" frame, not a 21"! Good bikes though, nice and strong.


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## Gunk (7 Feb 2020)

As a fan of “gas pipe” Raleigh’s I like that


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## SkipdiverJohn (8 Feb 2020)

Gunk said:


> As a fan of “gas pipe” Raleigh’s I like that



Whilst the majority of Pioneers were some sort of hi-tensile steel, Raleigh 18-23 AFAIK, there were plenty made of better, lighter tubesets - for those customers willing to pay.
I have a pub hack 18-23 lugged frame, a top of the range version with lugged Reynolds 501 , and a later welded one, an "accidental purchase" (originally intended for someone else as a pub hack, but turned out to be like new) with slightly oversize 4130 cro-moly tubing.
The 501 bike remains my favourite for the way it rides and looks, but no steel Pioneer is a "bad" bike, not even a 6-speed poverty spec commuter model. They all do the job.


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## Gunk (8 Feb 2020)

The poverty spec Raleigh’s do ride well. I’m really surprised how nice my 18-23 Team Banana is with a basic 6 speed drivetrain. It feels old school but very smooth.


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## Blue Hills (8 Feb 2020)

SkipdiverJohn said:


> Whilst the majority of Pioneers were some sort of hi-tensile steel, Raleigh 18-23 AFAIK, there were plenty made of better, lighter tubesets - for those customers willing to pay.
> I have a pub hack 18-23 lugged frame, a top of the range version with lugged Reynolds 501 , and a later welded one, an "accidental purchase" (originally intended for someone else as a pub hack, but turned out to be like new) with slightly oversize 4130 cro-moly tubing.
> The 501 bike remains my favourite for the way it rides and looks, but no steel Pioneer is a "bad" bike, not even a 6-speed poverty spec commuter model. They all do the job.


at the risk of threaddrift skippy, you sound like the perfect person to ask:
is there any advantage to a lugged frame over a welded one?
I very much suspect not.
And some welded frames** are quite well done so I personally don't see any great aesthetic problem.

** not of course those horrible things, often modern, which have welds which always remind me of crimped pie casings. Fine on a pie you are just about to eat but not on something you are going to be looking at every day.


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## spark303 (8 Feb 2020)

Nice bike. I was thinking of doing something similar - build up an old hybrid into a budget fixed gear Surly Cross Check-alike 

What front rack is that?


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## Ming the Merciless (8 Feb 2020)

Very typical of mountain bikes of the time, apart from the bars.


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## SkipdiverJohn (8 Feb 2020)

Blue Hills said:


> is there any advantage to a lugged frame over a welded one? I very much suspect not.



It depends on the type of steel tubing being used, but generally a welded frame can be just as strong as a lugged & brazed one. The caveat though, is if you were building with a type of tube that cannot be joined at very high temperatures without weakening it (such as Reynolds 531 and especially 753), then a lugged frame can be made stronger than a welded one, particularly if the brazing is done using silver as it melts at a lower temperature than brass.
For mass-production hi-tensile or 4130 grade cro-moly, a properly welded frame will be strong enough. Most MTB's have always been welded; lugged ones are actually quite rare - although I have a couple of them. However, even a very neatly welded steel frame (such as my 4130 Pioneer) never looks as pleasing as a lugged frame - so I will always prefer lugged construction even where it does not offer any technical benefit. My Raleigh Royal frame in particular, would not look so nice in my opinion, if it had been made from welded cro-moly rather than lugged 531. It would probably still ride well though, assuming identical geometry and tube diameters were used.


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## Frottish (9 Feb 2020)

spark303 said:


> Nice bike. I was thinking of doing something similar - build up an old hybrid into a budget fixed gear Surly Cross Check-alike
> 
> What front rack is that?


I had to get creative with a hammer and some old scaff to widen out the inside of the chain stays and fork in order to fit decent 2.1" 29er tires in there, but these old hybrids are made like tanks so no risk of the bike becoming weak.

As for the rack, it's a no-name Cube rack designed for one of their hybrid things, got it for £10 on bike-discount.de. Absolute bargain as all the other mini V-boss mounted front racks I was looking at at the time were £60+ from hipster brands.


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## Frottish (9 Feb 2020)

SkipdiverJohn said:


> Doesn't look anything like my ones either! (yes, I have more than one Pioneer)
> 
> Judging by the amount of seatpost sticking out, the OP would have been better starting off with a 23" frame, not a 21"! Good bikes though, nice and strong.


Yeah, but finding a 23" was not possible at the time and I needed a beater bike asap. I like to think of it as "compact" rather than "too small"


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## Gunk (9 Feb 2020)

Frottish said:


> I had to get creative with a hammer and some old scaff to widen out the inside of the chain stays and fork in order to fit decent 2.1" 29er tires in there, but these old hybrids are made like tanks so no risk of the bike becoming weak.
> 
> As for the rack, it's a no-name Cube rack designed for one of their hybrid things, got it for £10 on bike-discount.de. Absolute bargain as all the other mini V-boss mounted front racks I was looking at at the time were £60+ from hipster brands.



A threaded bar is a more subtle way of widening the chainstay and forks, I had to widen the chainstay about half an inch on mine and using nuts and washers on a threaded bar worked well.


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## SkipdiverJohn (10 Feb 2020)

YukonBoy said:


> Very typical of mountain bikes of the time, apart from the bars.



And apart from the wheel size of course.....



Frottish said:


> I like to think of it as "compact" rather than "too small"



Have you ever considered going into estate agency?



Gunk said:


> A threaded bar is a more subtle way of widening the chainstay and forks, I had to widen the chainstay about half an inch on mine and using nuts and washers on a threaded bar worked well.



I don't think the subtle approach would have been enough. I suspect the issue was tyre clearance at the BB end of the stays and near the fork crown, not at the dropouts. Jamming a bit of scaffold tube in the gap and whacking it in as far as possible with a big hammer would have flattened the tubes a bit more where their diameter is large. It's just a more brutal way than how a frame builder will shape the stays to achieve tyre/chainring clearance. The Pioneer has a fair bit of clearance anyway, so I don't suppose the DIY opening out was too drastic. There's loads of daylight around my Pioneer frames & forks when running 38mm Marathons.


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## Frottish (10 Feb 2020)

SkipdiverJohn said:


> I don't think the subtle approach would have been enough. I suspect the issue was tyre clearance at the BB end of the stays and near the fork crown, not at the dropouts. Jamming a bit of scaffold tube in the gap and whacking it in as far as possible with a big hammer would have flattened the tubes a bit more where their diameter is large. It's just a more brutal way than how a frame builder will shape the stays to achieve tyre/chainring clearance.



Precisely! It took a fair few whaks to get the steel to move the couple of mm's I needed, but I can get 54c tires in there now. Any bigger and you start hitting the underside of the fork crown...and there isn't too much you can do about that with just a hammer and some old scaff.


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## 12boy (10 Feb 2020)

Old steel mtn bikes, especially chrome moly ones are great bikes for commuting. The long wheelbase, room for big tires and braze ons for racks, bottles etc make for a useful, comfortable and durable vehicle for ill paved roads. As far as tig welded frames go mine have never failed at the welds and my Surly Steamroller has gone for tens of thousands of miles. Is that a single speed with a chain tensioner? I love single speeds for commuting.


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## spark303 (11 Feb 2020)

Frottish said:


> As for the rack, it's a no-name Cube rack designed for one of their hybrid things, got it for £10 on bike-discount.de. Absolute bargain as all the other mini V-boss mounted front racks I was looking at at the time were £60+ from hipster brands.


Nice one - I've been looking for a small front rack like that but balked at the 'nitto/velo-orange' tax they usually have!


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## netman (22 Feb 2020)

Frottish said:


> I call it the urban assault rustbucket!
> 
> View attachment 503556



Nice! I have a Pioneer in the shed waiting for a similar treatment - out of interest, what gearing did you go with? And what's the chain bit alongside the seat post?


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## Frottish (25 Feb 2020)

netman said:


> Nice! I have a Pioneer in the shed waiting for a similar treatment - out of interest, what gearing did you go with? And what's the chain bit alongside the seat post?



I'm running 42T front and 17T rear. I had 16T originally when running 28c tires, but the move to 50cs made the gearing that little bit too hard on the hills. As for the chain near the seatpost, that is my saddle anti-theft device - basically an old single speed chain split and re-pinned to the right length to go through the saddle rails and the frame.


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