Video: Rusty 1984 Raleigh Bomber gets glorious sentimental restoration

That's a great restoration. The colours are just fine. Beautiful.

Smile deffinately on my face.

I didn't have a Bomber, I had a Grifter. Loved it.

Have a nice Monday.

Hope to see this on my local roads.. fantastic and needs to be ridden!

Great job. The postman's comment nearly brought a tear to the eye. My first bike was a Striker and then a Burner. Then a blue racer, cannot remember the name. After that, a 531 Corsa with 105 and the Bio-pace rings. Nearly everyone one of my bikes were Raleighs.

Morning. All good with me. Thank you for all the positive comments and thank you Stim for deleting your previous comment. I am guessing you didn't even look at the clip before posting.

Great, but sad story, massive congrats on the restoration ! Just ignore the knobheads

Morning everyone! we all sweetness and light today?

Stim, shtoom.

If you're gonna get pissed up and then go on the Web, go somewhere where that's the norm.

I'm not normally one for censorship, but I think that this is a case where deleting all posts from just before Stim arrived and locking new comments would be justified... Otherwise there's likely to be lots of unnecessary swearing and abuse getting posted.

Can someone ban Stim before he makes more of a dick of himself than he already has?

Stim you really are a miserable cunt aren't you? Or a depressingly effective troll. Either way, you're thoroughly deplorable. Do fuck off and stop ruining a great tale for everybody else.

Stim, if you actually took 3m 40s to watch the video you will see that my brother died tragically in 1992 aged 18 and that his pride and joy Bomber went missing for 15 years.

Thanks Jellysticks. I bought another Super Bomber in case I needed spares. I may restore that in pink just to piss off the purists. Mike.

Lycraman - guessing Mike - some people are...well...just massive fucking wankers?

As you say the 'quality' of the bike, if that's even an issue, is hardly the point. The quality of the restoration looks awesome to me - top job.

It's irrelevant whether the bikes were good or not. This Raleigh Bomber was my younger brothers pride and joy and I decided to restore it, end of. I've enjoyed restoring it and I posted the video for his old friends to take a trip down memory lane. I didn't ask for it to be posted on this site but I'm grateful for the positive feedback. I am sorry if I have offended anyone with loud music (Bomber by Motörhead) and non Snakebelly tyres (the ones on e-bay aren't Cheng originals) but I've restored it for me and how I think my brother would have liked it. I have had hundreds of positive comments and three negative ones, two on here, so that's not too bad.

Great restoration job, though the tyres are incorrect - they should be snake-belly (chevron) pattern treads, such as these:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PAIR-26x2-125-SNAKEBELLY-BLUE-GUMWALL-RALEIGH-BOMBER-CRUISER-TYRES-/190966529619?pt=UK_sportsleisure_cycling_bikeparts_SR&hash=item2c767dfe53

I had a new one in 1985, a black and chrome 5-speed version, which I thought was blimmin marvellous at the time.

Heavy, yes, but what a brilliant paper-round bike - super-durable, and comfy for morning and evening paper deliveries, while being versatile enough for a weekend thrash about the woods or towpath, or commute to the station.

I was jealous when my friend got one of the first Maverick MTBs, so I set about upgrading my Bomber to 15 speeds with a triple Sakae chainset, and later, alloy rims, which made it into quite a formidable mud-plugger!

I later sold it and went over to mountainbikes, but the Bomber had a certain magic about it, a bit like the bicycle equivalent of a Harley-Davidson.

Good to see that they have a decent following.

great story taking me back to childhood as for stim's comment about consigning grifters to the scrap heap how dare he i used to kick ass against bmxers on the many improvised tracks in our local park although i did prefer the burner that took it's place

Had to put the video on mute,what the hell is that all about?
Raleigh Bomber-horrible contraptions,remember this gangly youth with a long nose called Neville and his twin brother having a pair of these bloody awful things in black back in the early 80s
I used to challenge them to races round the block on the council estate in the midlands i lived in at the time,i was on my Raleigh Burner and used to lap these idiots despite all their huffing and puffing,atrocious bikes,heavy,unwieldy,slow,good for nothing except the scrap cart along with choppers,Raleigh Grifters and the rest of those hideous pieces of crap
What on Earth possessed this guy to renovate the pile of junk ive got no idea,probably middle aged nostalgia for a childhood long long

I had a black one in my childhood. It was a great bike!

Magic stuff.....supercool!

Great stuff.

I still have most of my old '85 Maverick in my loft. I should rebuild it.

I rode a few bombers bitd and my mav had that same front light till some tea leaf wandered off with it.

Raleigh have definitely seen it Neil! Great to see the heartwarming story. Fantastic restoration. Now that reminds me, that Europa in the garage ain't gonna restore itself!

Brilliant story. My mate had one too. He has never forgotten his.

That's a lovely story, good effort.

That made my day - lovely story. I hope Raleigh see it too.

Heartwarming