Raleigh "Conversion" Professional

Joel is Guitar Ted‘s co-worker.  These words and photos are from Guitar Ted’s arsenal!

A little background on Joel and his rig: This is a Raleigh Professional circa 1974. Joel has had it since the late 70’s. Joel has been a racer, bike shop mechanic, shop manager, and now teaches Spanish at a local community college and works part time at our shop. He has been commuting regularly on this bike for 10 years.

For all of that ten years, and actually going back to approximately 1985, Joel has had this set up with 650B wheels. He got them off of a Raleigh Tamarack, a circa 1984 Raleigh “Mountain Tour” rig. (I actually owned a 650B Tamarack for awhile!) The rims are still the same, but Joel laced up a different set of hubs some years ago now. He recently got the Rolly Polly’s on it and loves them!

Joel rode it in just for me on a raw, windy, drizzly day with temps hovering around 50 degrees. He was pretty chilled when he arrived at the shop, but he’s excited about any interest in his bike. He wanted me to wait for him to clean it p, but I started snapping off photos right off, saying it looked “real” if it was dirty.

Notice the lack of a lock ring on the track cog. Joel explains that he always has ridden fixed this way. He never goes without hand brakes and doesn’t do any “tricks”, so he feels perfectly safe without a lock ring.  The bike weighs at 22.5lbs, by the way, with flashlight and soaked Brooks Pro saddle!