Ye Olde Favorite the Raleigh Twenty

John L. Lucci wrote:

Now that I have one I'm cosidering doing a little hopping up. Although I'd
love to do something radical al' la Sheldon Brown. I'm thinking something
along a "product improved" Raliegh Twenty and keep it a workhorse bike as
the Raleigh engineers had intended her to be.

Specifically I was thinking lighter rims, Shimano Nexus seven speed hub, and
dispensing with the front Dynohub entirely.

Wow, I never saw a Dynohub on a Twenty.

As well as racks front and rear
for hauling groceries or other cargo; however, after looking at some of the
other Twenty's on E-bay and studing the racks available from the large mail
order houses I'm wondering how would I go about putting racks on it. The
racks I've seen attached to other twenties on E-bay look like they were
specially designed for the twenty (and lets face it if they were it means
they have been out of production at least 25 years.).
Starting with the racks are there any suggestions as to where to find racks
that would work? Anyone still making racks that would mount to the Raliegh
20 frame and front fork?

Probably the best option is a seatpost mount rack. There are lots of
those out there.

See:
http://harriscyclery.net/site/page.cfm?PageID=49&Category=86&Brands=All&type=T

As for the later phases of the project the improvement of the powertrain
who sells Nexus Hubs

We do! http://harriscyclery.com/hubs-internal.html

and how much would a package of the the Nexus hub, a
fron't hub, a set of good alloy 20 X 1.75 rims be with enough spokes to
build up the new wheels?

See: http://harriscyclery.com/wheels

A partial reason for swapping out the hubs is that
the Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub has something wrong with one of it's speeds
(doesn't engauge)

If it's 2nd or 3rd gear, it's probably just a cable adjustment (or
replacement-the original cables are very long and don't use modern lined
housing)

If it's 1st gear, there's a decent chance that oiling the hub will fix it.

and although I'd love to get the dynohub working my twenty
came without the front light and based on past discussions on here the
dynohub light isn't much of a light to begin with so I rather save a pound
or two and run a conventional front hub and do lights another way.

Getting Dynohubs to work well with small wheels is just about
impossible, nobody makes a suitable bulb for that application. I used to
have a Moulton with a Dynohub, and every bulb I tried either gave a dim
yellow glow, or burned out on the first downhill.

Sheldon "Twentyphile" Brown
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Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
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