Raleigh Chopper
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ALL YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT CLASSIC RALEIGH CHOPPERS BUT DIDN'T KNOW WHO TO ASK

First, we need to understand how the stand is held in. Lie your bike down on the floor, chainring side down. If you look under the frametube that holds the stand, you will see a tiny pin sticking out. This pin holds the stand into the frametube. Don’t try to pull the pin out, it wont work. The pin is mushroom shaped, with its larger end stuck into the stand.
It is in a keyhole shaped hole, and is held tight by the very spring that gives the stand its spring assisted location. If you look where the stand exits the frametube, you will see there is a collar around the stand. This collar contains the other pin hole and holds in the stand tensioner spring. The tension of this spring holds everything in place.
Picture one shows the small pin sticking out of the frame tube.
To allow the pin to be removed, we must push the collar inwards, allowing the larger part of the keyhole slot in the frame tube to line up with the hole in the collar and therefore allow removal of the pin. Once the pin is removed, the stand simply pulls out.
Pushing in the spring is the difficult part. With the frame on its side, if you have two burly friends on hand, and two large screwdrivers, you can have your friends push down on the collar with the screwdrivers, whilst you pull out the pin with pliers. Don’t kid yourself that this is easy - it isn’t. The collar has to be depressed an awful long way for those two holes to line up, you need strong friends indeed! Far better to build yourself a stand removal tool.
You need a small piece of tube and a “G” clamp to do this.
The “G” clamp needs to have a jaw dimension of 6 inches, most G clamps are sold by jaw size, ask for “a six inch G clamp” and that’s what you will get! G clamps can be bought very cheaply from cheap tool shops.
The piece of tube needs to be around two inches long, and 3/4 inches wide. It needs to be fairly strong tube if you are going to use it regularly. If it’s just a “one off” you can get away with thin wall tubing.
Once you have your piece of tube, you need a hacksaw and a vise.
(getting technical here ) as you need to make two cuts into the tube. First stand your tube upright in the vise, holding the bottom in the vise jaws, and cut right down the center of the tube…not all the way, just around an inch and a bit (3cm). Then you need to hold the tube sideways in the vise and cut downwards to meet your long cuts, thus removing a half piece of the tube. If you look at the accompanying pictures you will see what I mean.
..O.K. you’ve made your bit of tubing, and bought a G clamp. Observing the next photo, you should see how it works, you position the G clamp to squeeze the tube onto the collar, thus moving the collar inwards, compressing the spring, and allowing the two holes to align. When aligned, you pull the pin out. Sometimes the holes don’t quite line up properly, you may need a bit of force to get the pin out, just use pliers, or, as in the picture, mole (vise) grips. This next bit is very very important: DON’T LOSE THE PIN. It’s easy to lose because it’s tiny, please put it somewhere safe. Taping it to the stand is a good idea.
Inside the frame tube there is another piece of tube, commonly called the ‘Toblerone’ after the triangular shaped chocolate bar. If you have an early (up to 1971) Mk 1 bike , the toblerone is welded into the frame tube, so all you can do is clean 30 years worth of dirt out of the tube. On all later Mk1s and Mk2s the toblerone is removable.
Here’s a picture of it being removed.
The toblerone has bumps on its end that control the position of the stand, the roll pin in the inner end of the stand is pushed into contact with the cams on the toblerone by the stand tensioner spring, this roll pin locates in either the ‘up’ or the ‘down’ position.
Because of its purpose, care must be taken when replacing the toblerone for stand assembly. On post 1975 (ish) Choppers there is a small mark on the visible triangular end of the toblerone, this points towards the rear wheel. It only gets tricky on the 1972/3/4 Choppers with removable toblerones, but no mark. It’s easiest to fit the toblerone and then push the stand in by hand, you can feel the stand roll pin locate in the toblerones cams, and it should be easy to work its position out by moving the stand up and down. The next picture shows the toblerone replaced in a Mk 2 frame
If you decide to restore your stand, remember it is Galvanised, NEVER chrome plated. To restore the stand you need to remove the collar and spring. There is a roll pin in the inner end of the stand, again held in place by that tensioner spring. This time you can squash the tensioner spring in a vise and remove the roll pin. The tensioner spring and the collar can be safely stored away with the mushroom locator pin, until the stand comes back from the galvanisers.
One last thing, If you look at this picture, you can see that the end of the G clamp has been modified (with an angle grinder) to miss the chain ring. This modification is important if your G clamp is too big to fit. If you are only removing stands from bikes that have already had the chainring and pedal cranks removed, it’s not necessary, but it’s best to make the tool adaptable for all bikes.