How Do I Fix-Up the Super Course?

Ryan's blog also clued me into Velo Orange, a company with a go-slow, no-lycra, no-yelling vision for bicycles. My surfing also brings me to Rivendell Bicycle Works, which has a similar vibe and beautiful design. I am especially taken by Rivendell Catalog #20.

Against these carefully constructed, high-end, designerly, and playful brands I find this film: How a Bicycle is Made, 1945, set at the Raleigh factory in Nottingham, England.

Note the passive tone of the title of the film. I'm surprised and taken a back, although perhaps I shouldn't be, by the industrial processes that are required to make a bicycle in post war England - and I assume today - and the potentially de-humanizing work involved. I can't imagine how the workers in this film might interpret my investigations of the Super Course. Given their hard work in the factory, I feel unsettled that I get to play with the Super Course. At about 11 minutes 37 seconds into the film we see a worker packing hubs with ballbearings. The narrator says "This worker can fill over one thousand hubs in an eight hour day." Which is more than 2 hubs per minute. I'm stunned by the standardization of work and the human skill involved.

From Sheldon Brown, I also discover a community-oriented shop, Aaron's Bicycle Repair, where I learn a lot. I look forward to visiting and browsing the shop's library some day. I should also say that every three or four weeks I ask a question to the friendly people at Recycled Cycles on Boat Street in the University District, and I usually buy something when I do. Given their expertise, that only seems fair.

I soon learned that there are English, Italian, French, and Swiss threads for bottom brackets. Moreover, Sheldon Brown tells me that Raleigh had their own proprietary threading.  And so, and so forth.

If I follow Sheldon Brown correctly, since my Super Course crank is steel, with cotter pins, the bicycle was manufactured in Nottingham, England and the bottom bracket shell has the special Raleigh threading. Therefore, for simplicity, if I upgrade the bottom bracket and crank I might as well go with the Velo Orange Threadless Bottom Bracket, although Sheldon Brown outlines other solutions which seem to require greater technical skill and determined experimentation. At that moment, I wished I had a nearby community bike shop where I could talk this over with an expert.

During my web surfing I was unable to confirm that the Velo Orange Threadless Bottom Bracket would actually work on the Super Course. My measurement of the bottom bracket shell is somewhere around 70 mm. Later, on Velo Orange, I find this statement "Customers report that they also work in Raleigh frames with a 71mm wide BB shell." That was encouraging. However,  I interpreted "customers report" as a weak signal and I'm pretty sure that while my BB shell is not 71 mm.

Basically, I'm not really sure how to measure things and I don't have a sense for acceptable tolerances. Anyway, I shouldn't have worried. I eventually install it, and I can report that the Velo Orange Threadless Bottom Bracket works beautifully on the Super Course!

Here's what my Raleigh Super Course looks like on June 23, 2015, after about 120 miles of riding, including about 36 miles of Northwest forest road gravel. More about the gravel later.

The Raleigh Super Course Upgrade, Version 1.0, June 23, 2015