TI Raleigh, Limited 177 Lenton Boulevard
Nottingham NG7 27B England
TI Raleigh is located in the central region of England, appropriately called the Midlands. It was here that the industrial revolution found its beginnings and witnessed many of the innovations and inventions that gave rise to large-scale manufacturing.
The largest portion of the TI Raleigh complex is located in Nottingham. There are also factories in Ilkeston and in Workshop which produce bicycles, and two factories in Birmingham which produce bicycle parts. From its humble beginnings in Nottingham in 1886, where production was about three bicycles per week, TI Raleigh has grown into the largest producer of quality bicycles in the world, manufacturing over two million bicycles per year.
The history of the Raleigh bicycle begins, most appropriately, in a small workshop on Raleigh Street in Nottingham, England.
Three workmen, Woodhead, Angois, and Ellis, began building bicycles in 1886. Since their bicycles were well designed and well constructed, they had no trouble selling them. Their popularity came to the attention of an enthusiastic cyclist, Frank Bowden, who had been looking for more than a new bicycle for himself.
Frank Bowden was a successful lawyer who had just returned to England from the Far East, ill but with a small fortune.
Financially secure, Bowden turned his attention to a search for medical cures for his illness:
I arrived in England troubled by an inactive liver, sleeplessness, bad circulation, varicose veins, rheumatism and general debility. The result was a very weak condition of body and but little energy of mind (Bowden 1975, p. 13).
Background
Frank Bowden went from doctor to doctor without finding a cure. Finally, he met a physician at the Harrogate spa who advised him to take up cycling. His cure was almost miraculous. Within four months, his health was restored and he began to think very seriously about introducing people to the benefits of cycling. He was so enthusiastic about the sport that in December 1888 he negotiated the purchase of the little workshop on Raleigh Street and thus founded the Raleigh Bicycle Company.
Raleigh continued to grow through two world wars and the many ups and downs of the bicycle market. From those early beginnings, the Raleigh Bicycle Company has expanded to the point that the factory in Nottingham alone employs 8,500 people in a complex that covers 64 acres.
Another British bicycle company in Birmingham, Tube In vestments, better known as TI, shared Raleigh's spectacular growth. Both TI and Raleigh had grown by good management and the acquisition of other bicycle companies. By 1959, both companies dominated sales throughout much of the world. In 1960 they decided to quit competing with each other and merged into the company known today as TI Raleigh. After the merger, it was decided that the bicycle production would be handled in Nottingham and the component manufacturing would be handled in Birmingham.
The three TI Raleigh bicycle factories in the United Kingdom ( Nottingham, Worksop, Ilkeston) are all located within a 40-mile radius and each has its own specialty. The Nottingham factory produces what Raleigh terms the "bread and butter" bicycles, These include children's, adult tourist, small-wheel, and adult sports bicycles. All of these bicycles are 1-, 3-, or 5-speed models.
A few 10-speeds are made in Nottingham, but these are generally the lower-priced models.
In the late 1950s, Raleigh felt that it was imperative to have a section devoted to the production of quality hand-built bicycles and by 1960, they concluded negotiations for the purchase of the famous Carlton factory located near the edge of Sherwood Forest in Worksop, England.
Today, the Carlton factory produces about eighty-two thousand bicycles per year, bearing either the Raleigh or Carlton names. All Raleigh bicycles that are built with Reynolds 531 are made at the Carlton factory in Worksop, The original Carlton factory was located in Carlton, England, not far from Worksop. The first Carlton bicycles were made by the village smithy, Fred Hanstock, in 1896. As a result of the popularity of the bicycles, the factory was moved to the larger facilities in Worksop in the 1930s. Daniel R. O'Donovan was employed as general manager in 1937 and he became so enamored with his work that in 1939 he bought the business. His sons, Gerald and Kevin, shared their father's interest, and as schoolboys they spent all their free time at their father's factory. Gerald, who was studying structural engineering, found the Carlton factory to be an endless challenge as he explored the technical aspect of bicycle manufacturing. Eventually, he was allowed to help in the frame building operations and review the engineering designs for the different Carlton models. His frame-building career officially started in 1937 and he is still actively building and designing frames. Kevin's interest was centered around the marketing aspect of the business which led to his current position as the managing director of TI Raleigh's South African operation.
At the Worksop factory, only the track bicycles and the custom bicycles are individually brazed on an open hearth. All the other bicycles are ring-brazed on a specially designed machine. A Raleigh bicycle frame goes through a myriad of operations on the highly mechanized production line at the Worksop factory.
Building Philosophy
All the frames built on the production line have mitered tubes except for the tube ends that go into the bottom bracket. The tubes are mitered and fitted into the lugs with a ring of brass inserted between the tube and the lug. When the joint is heated, the brass flows throughout the lug and solidly binds the joint. Next, the tubes are drilled for ventilation and the lugs are hand-filed to insure uniformity. The tubes for the regular production bicycles are not pinned before the brazing operation; they are coppered (a quick tack-brazing operation using copper instead of brass) to insure proper alignment. Copper is used because it melts at a higher temperature than brass. When the frame is ring-brazed with brass, the tubes will stay in place since the brass will flow before the copper reaches its melting point, With the ring-brazing method, the frame joints are first copper-tacked with hand-held torches. Once the entire frame is completely copper-tacked, it is placed on the ring-brazing machine. The machine then brazes all the tubes that go into the bottom bracket, the head lug and its tubes, and finally the seat lug.
The machine holds the entire frame while each joint is blasted in turn with gas jets at a set time and temperature. After each joint is completely brazed, the machine rotates the frame (like a windmill) into position to braze the next joint. This process continues until the whole bicycle frame is brazed. The top-line frames are ring-brazed on these machines, but the timing and temperature are set differently for Reynolds 531DB frames. The machine applies the heat more slowly and at a slightly lower temperature. The brazing on the machine is done with a combination of acetylene and oxygen. Unlike the frames, the forks are built by hand. The fork blades are pinned to the fork crowns and they are brazed with hand-held torches.
Once the bicycle frame and the fork are brazed, they are sent to the refinement department. Here, frames and forks are cleaned of any excess brass with hand-held torches using natural gas be fore they undergo the second filing operation. Everything is filed by air-driven belt files before the frame and fork are faced, bored, and threaded by machine. Every frame and fork is then checked for trueness. Each frame and fork go through the sulfuric acid pickling tanks twice, before and after the final filing. Putting the frame and fork through the pickling tanks serves to clean them and to prepare the metal for the paint. TI Raleigh had sandblasted the frames until they found that the pickling process caused less damage and increased the ability of the paint to adhere to the metal.
After each dip in the pickling tank, the frame and fork are oven-dried. Frames and forks are then primed and painted by hand in individual painting booths. Each frame and fork receives three or four coats of paint including the undercoating. If a frame or fork requires chroming, it is sent to the Raleigh complex in Nottingham.
All of the remaining assembly operations needed to complete the bicycle are performed by hand. Although the Carlton factory tried automatic wheel-building machines, they were unable to equal the previous productivity of the department because of excessive downtime. Consequently, they decided it was more productive to hand-build wheels.
Eddie Haslehurst, the foreman of the Carlton factory frame shop and an employee of Carlton since 1930, shows pride in his workmanship as do many of his co-workers. Many of Eddie's co-workers have been employed at Carlton all their working lives-the Carlton factory is their second home. Their attitude is best reflected in Eddie's own words: "We like it here at Carlton and we try to make sure that the work done here is special." In 1974, TI Raleigh completed its Ilkeston factory. The factory was constructed to respond to the demands of TI Raleigh's increased involvement in racing. TI Raleigh knew that they would need to further develop their racing bicycle if their growing status among racers was to continue. The Carlton factory was originally purchased for this purpose in 1960, but a growing bicycle market changed the production of the Carlton factory from 2,500 bicycles per year to almost 30 times that per year. Consequently, the Carlton factory was no longer suitable for the individual one-of -a-kind production needed for top professionals.
The specialty bicycle section was moved in 1974 from Work sop to a new factory in Ilkeston, Derbyshire. Because of his technical skills, Gerald O'Donovan was put in charge of the new specialty factory. The building is quite small in comparison to the rest of the TI Raleigh operation-it only encompasses about 12,000 square feet of floor space. Fortunately, the intent of the facility has remained unchanged-the volume of bicycles produced is secondary to the innovation and quality of the product.
The Ilkeston factory is best described as a test laboratory rather than a factory, and its emphasis on research has resulted in several major cycling breakthroughs.
In the 1960s Gerald O'Donovan devoted much of his energy to finding lighter tubing for bicycle production. He looked first at carbon fiber and he produced a prototype carbon fiber frame that was first shown at the Anaheim Aerospace Materials Convention in 1968. The primary problem with the carbon fiber frame was the lack of an acceptable method of fastening the tubes; they had to be glued. Although carbon fiber is stiffer than steel, it is unsuitable for bicycle frames because of the lack of strength of the joints which are epoxied together. Since the weakest link in a frame is its joint, the carbon frames were unable to equal the stiffness of a "normal" Reynolds 531DB frame because no one has discovered a glue that is as stiff as carbon fiber itself. O'Donovan's dissatisfaction with his carbon fiber frame led him to other exotic materials.
Gerald O'Donovan then did some work with titanium. Although he was able to solve the problem of how to braze the tubes together (titanium requires very special brazing techniques), he was prevented from producing many frames because of the component problem. Because of the large-diameter tubes required to compensate for titanium's "softness" (less "stiff" than steel), it is unsuitable for bicycle frames unless the component manufacturers redesign components that will fit the oversize tubes. In addition to the high cost of the titanium, there are design problems that must be solved before the frame can be manufactured. For example, if you have very large-diameter chainstays, how do you get the cranks to retain their normal width relation ship without hitting the chainstays?
Figure 9-1: Gerald O'Donovan (left) and one of the technicians discuss
the setup of a frame prior to brazing.
Unable to produce a titanium frame that would meet stiffness requirements, O'Donovan turned his attention back to steel alloys.
In his search for lighter tubing, Gerald O'Donovan became involved with some work that was being conducted at TI Reynolds by Stan Smith, the chief metallurgist and Terry Reynolds, the technical director. They had discovered an interesting tube but they didn't know what to do with it. The problem, according to O'Donovan, was "How do we join it? How do we work with it?
Figure 9-2: One of the many Raleigh test machines. This machine measures
the deflection of the bottom bracket under various loads.
What gauge should it be in? And how do we stress it? After all, how thick were we to make the tube walls?" Working for more than two years, O'Donovan, in collaboration with TI Reynolds, developed what is now called Reynolds 753 tubing. Finally 753 tubing has emerged from the experimental into the trial stage. A lot of time and effort at TI Raleigh has gone into the development of 753, and Gerald O'Donovan is still continuing to change specifications for the 753 frames he is building to make the most out of this remarkable tubing.
Gerald O'Donovan believes that "everything on a frame ends up as a resultant of the hanger (bottom) bracket. No matter what you do. You stand on the pedal; you pull on the handlebar and it's transmitted through the frame to your foot." As a result of this belief, Gerald O'Donovan started of f on the 753 project by doing stress analysis tests on the computer. By programming the stress requirements of the bottom bracket, he was able to work out the parameters of the loads resulting from pedaling, coasting, cornering, and braking. With the use of the computer, he was able to determine technical requirements of each of the frame's components.
Today, testing continues on 753 frames with sensors that register the stresses that are encountered during actual riding on the road. Concurrently, tests are performed in the laboratory at Ilkeston and at the TI Raleigh product testing center in Nottingham.
In one test, a complete bicycle is set up on a testing machine with 100 kilograms of weight distributed on the bicycle in a front to rear ratio of 45:55. Each wheel of the bicycle is placed on a test machine drum which simulates one of the worst types of road condition-Belgian cobbles. The bicycle is pounded for six to ten thousand miles at a simulated rate of 42 kph. After the bicycles have been run through a gamut of tests, they are cut up and examined.
At the Ilkeston factory there are only four builders, including Gerald O'Donovan, who are capable of building the 753 frames from start to finish. Production, if that's what you want to call it, can approach 10 to 15 frames per week but is usually far less. All the frames are silver-soldered since nothing else will work at the low temperature required for brazing 753. Mr. O'Donovan has spent years testing the mixture of the silver used and, understandably, he will not reveal its composition. He will only refer to it as "bullion, the stuff you keep in Fort Knox."
All tubes are held rigidly in jigs during the building of 753 frames. Once it's brazed, the frame cannot be bent into correct alignment. According to O'Donovan, "The problem with pulling frames before they're cool is that you tend to cause the copper in the brazing rod to run into crystalline joints of the steel that cause brittle and broken tubes. The prominent cause of broken fork blades, and they usually break at the top near the fork crown, is that the fork has been hot set." The lugs that are used on the Raleigh 753s are generally made to O'Donovan's specifications by Raleigh, although he does use other makes such as Prugnat. Lugs are stocked in 72-, 73-, and 74-degree angles. These sizes will cover all the different angles used in normal 753 frame geometry. If a 75-degree angle seat lug is needed, it can be obtained from a 74-degree lug. O'Donovan believes that lugs are generally interchangeable within 1 degree.
Reshaping a lug more than 1 degree is not possible because of the close tolerances required by the silver-brazing of 753. If the angle of the lug must be changed, it can be altered on a shaped mandrel to reduce any additional stresses on the frame tubes. Lugs must be tapered and not thinned all over. According to O'Donovan, if you file a lug to death and the mitering is of f slightly, you've got a "mushy frame." Since 753 cannot be hot set or cold set, there is usually little chance of getting it repaired properly in the event of an accident.
Although 753 should not be reheated, it is possible to replace a chainstay without creating adverse effects on the rest of the frame.
It is too "chancy" to replace any other tube. Remember this if you decide to order a custom-built 753 frame.
The care required in building with 753 is further demonstrated by the need to use chamfered (with brazed top plates) seatstays rather than a fastback stay. Gerald O'Donovan believes the smart builder is prohibited from attaching the seatstays to the seat tube since the seat tube is only .014 inch thick! He uses chamfered seatstays because the seat lug acts as a heat shield and minimizes the possibility of overheating.
Mr. O'Donovan's frame philosophy is that accuracy in building starts at the building stage, not after it's been made. "A frame should not be brazed to death, filed to death, and finished to death. Some builders have a very nice looking product, but by the time they're finished with it they've worked the poor frame to death before they've even started riding it. They've flogged it to death. We tend to go for a fair standard of finishing and a very great deal of engineering integrity." Frame Selection As O'Donovan continues to experiment with various designs for 753, he continually comes up against component problems. Presently, he is experimenting with TI Raleigh manufactured lugs for some 753 frames, and he has also been able to arrange for a specification change on Campagnolo's titanium bottom bracket axle. According to O'Donovan, there is no relation between the titanium bottom bracket axles that the TI Raleigh team is using and the axles that are commercially available. The axles that O'Donovan has ordered are twice as strong because of their larger diameter. O'Donovan is a great believer in "reducing the gauge and increasing the section of the tubing." As a result, he believes that if further advancements are to be made in bicycle frames, component manufacturers are going to have to design new components to accommodate these various frame design improvements.
Gerald O'Donovan was a professional aircraft engineer during World War II and as a result was trained to think in terms of ergonomics in the design of equipment. He was required to translate the human body's motions into fixed distances. This training has carried over into his bicycle designs. Gerald O'Donovan personally designs the frames for the TI Raleigh team riders.
He is the type of builder who can take a potential world champion and look at him and say "you need this type of bicycle for this event." Generally, before he designs a frame, he likes to see the rider in action. He likes to be able to observe his individual riding style because the "ideal" position for a rider from the ergonomic viewpoint may appear to be one position and the specific requirements for an individual may be quite different.
One interesting example is professional rider Hennie Kuiper who tends to ride in a more forward position than most people.
Gradually, O'Donovan has adjusted the design of Kuiper's frame whereby the seat tube is set a little more forward than "normal." In general, O'Donovan is interested primarily in the rider's position on the bike. "I'm interested in where he is going to sit;
the angles are where they fall." Perfect examples of this philosophy were the track bicycles O'Donovan built for Ferdinand Bracke, 1964 and 1969 world champion pursuit cyclist. They all had a 72-degree seat tube! When building a custom frame, Mr. O'Donovan believes that the ideal frame should fi t the rider without extreme adjustments of the component parts. In other words, if a rider has an ideal frame for his physique, the saddle should be centered on the seatpost and he shouldn't need to use a very long nor very short handlebar stem.
The 10-speed models that come to the United States are usually made at the Worksop factory. One-hundred eighty employees have the capacity to produce approximately 200 bicycles per day with Reynolds tubing. In reality, however, the factory produces only about 10,000 Raleigh 531DB bicycles a year. The Worksop factory is the only Raleigh facility that produces the Reynolds 531DB bicycles, the Reynolds 531 plain gauge bicycles, and some of those made from 2030 steel called "tp" or tube products-built bicycles. All of these bicycles are produced from standard specifications. Although the factory has the ability to produce one-of-kind custom bicycles, the majority of the custom frames are made for the Carlton-Weinman team. All team frames are hand-built to individual specifications.
On special request, you can have a Raleigh frame custom made by the Worksop factory. It is imperative that you go through the proper channels, however. TI Raleigh recommends that you pick an established Raleigh dealer who has the knowledge to match your individual measurements to appropriate frame dimensions. After the dealer has completed your order, he will send it to Raleigh Industries of America in Boston. They, in turn, will review your order and forward it to England. Once they receive the order in Nottingham, it will be sent to the engineering department where precise engineering plans will be drawn. The frame builders at the Worksop factory build only from engineering plans. Be prepared to wait from four to nine months for your custom frame. Generally, if you want a new custom frame for the upcoming bicycle season, Raleigh recommends placing the order one full season in advance.
Although most of us think of Raleigh as a good bicycle, few of us realize the efforts that have gone into their top-of-the-line equipment. In spite of growing inflation and demands to start mass production, they still maintain a sophisticated workshop that is unequalled in the world. Although they will not provide some of the services that make your bicycle visually unique, they can build a technically sophisticated frame that will equal the quality of the most famous custom builders.