Raleigh Scorpio

As I was on my way to the Zen Dojo early this morning I spied this little beauty out of the corner of my eye. I had a little look at it, just lent up against a railing where people from my street leave stuff in a kind of neater, more middle-class version of fly-tipping. Both tyres were flat and it wasn’t locked up, which I took to mean that it hadn’t been used in a while and it was unwanted. I didn’t want to take it there and then, but I decided that if it was still there when I came back from work this evening I’d have it.

Sure enough, when I came by tonight it was still there. So I took it.

I’ve tried to find a bit more about it from t’interweb, and there isn’t much out there. It seems to be a pretty basic model as it weighs a ton and is equipped with pretty crappy-looking components. The brakes, brake levers, pedals and rims are Weinmann items – all pretty cheap-looking. The gears are Shimano SIS, with plastic downtube shifters. If anyone can direct me to any more information on line, please leave a comment below.

The question remains “what to do with it?”. My current options are to sell it on Ebay as is; or maybe using it as the basis for a fixed conversion. I’ve been doing quite a bit of day-dreaming about building up a fixed gear bike lately, but in my reveries the base material for my conversion has always been some dust-covered vintage Mercian, or a beautiful Vivalo from an uncharacteristically tall Keirin rider, or even a sporty Italian like a Colnago. Strange what fate deals us sometimes.

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