Raleigh Rialto Urban Cruiser - By Klaassen

 ~1979. This customer wanted us to give this lovely donor the Klaassen magic. The Raleigh had a boring and lame look at first with his rack, city bike handlebar & brakes and saddle.

So like always we started with a 'discover and uncover' session, taking a good look at the bike. We saw some lovely fenders in the color of the frame. We saw a great frame colour. We saw some cool oldskool Raleigh parts and we noticed the nice white accents in the decals and made that the new accent color for the Klaassen signature, working really well with the lovely blue. The owner is a sporty biker and we know the heritage of Raleigh so we wanted to show that sporty heritage a bit more in this bike. 

In short:
After a thorough cleaning, we serviced all rotating parts, replaced the chain, removed the lights, dynamo & cable and bike rack. Less is more.

The wheels were a bit risky so a great opportunity for an upgrade to new ones with  more profile (body/aero), in chrome finish!
We were able to make a handlebar shifter from the original downtube shifter (check the details). For that Klaassen signature with the white accents we mounted a cool new make of the iconic Selle San Marco Turbo. We mounted a more sporty (integrated) and stylish seatpost.
We fitted Michelin whitewall tires, mounted new white cable housings and handlebar tape. We managed to upgrade the lights to much cooler and better looking lights on to the original holes in the fenders.

For urban rebuilds another Klaassen signature is the handlebar setup with a moonbar and reversed brakes. Here it's the same story. To prolong the durability of bike joy we treated some paint chips with a rust stabilizer.

We finished it off with the official 'ByKlaassen' edition decal.