Offered a 15 year old Rayleigh Dynatech cheap, worth it?

And when you've done several thousand miles on it, become obsessed etc. it will make a cracking fixie!

£50! Like many on this forum I expect, my tyres cost more than that!

The words gift horse and mouth spring to mind. 

Christ for fifty quid?

You should see the amount of crap I have lying around I've bought on a whim

The carbon fibre frame with 1" threaded headtube...WTF am I going to do with that!

Fettling and accumulating old bikes is a joy, takes you away from the bullshit that you need this seasons Ultegra, you'll die on the next climb if your next bike doesn't have 11-32 gears, going downhill is unsafe without discs.

Renovate or just ride who cares just enjoy riding retro bikes, if nothing else it just reminds you how amazing riding the summer bike worth more than a second hand car really is

Upgrade my arse!

Buy it - ride it! 50 quidsworth of anybody's money.

nice one, I rescued a Kona Lava Dome from the local tip back in the olden days (read mid 90s.lol), had full LX groupset including Mavic/LX wheels (though the BB shell was threaded), set me back £20...get in. Once I'd got it home I was like how the hell is that going to be the right size for me as it was tiny. Massively long seatpost, bit of fettling and away i went, the Conti Goliath semi-slicks were the bollocks and it was a lovely little winter commuter/trail bike until i decided to sell it on.

That was the first MTB I owned after 13 years or so of just riding drop bar bikes but i went for flat bar for my commuter/utility bikes ever since, the first of the Ridgeback genesis flat bar road bikes which I swapped for  a spesh globe pro 8+years ago, so do ride smaller frames but somehow the bigger frames that I'm used to feel that much more easy position wise.

Well worth £50, just needs some fettling, don't stress about the bonding of the tubes, it's not going to fall apart on you even worst case scenario.

if the gear ratios are okay for what you need, just strip the bits off, clean the cassette, chain, c/rings, derailleurs, re-align the front d and ensure the shiifters are dropping the rear d in the right place, check the brakes and pads, lube the cables or maybe replace them if that makes you feel at ease and away you go.

It'll only feel a bit big because you're not used to riding a frame that big. At 5ft 11 I ride a 62cm Raleigh with ease.

The only problem you would have IF you wanted to to upgrade is this is fairly likely to be 126mm OLN at the back, you could squeeze a modern wheelset in but personally I wouldn't.

Just fettle it, ride it and enjoy it, the only upgrade I'd suggest is some new tyres.

500EX is just below Ultegra and mechanically no different.

Enjoy.

2055 Performance Enhanced Tubeset - 52 tons tensile general purpose tubeset, featuring Chome-Moly-Manganese butted frame tubes teamed with Manganese Molybdenum narrow oval taper-gauge fork blades.

There were further 2060, 2070, 2080 models in Reynolds steel, and 2325 was the "aerospace grade" Titanium

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/gallery2/d/51205-3/Raleigh+Dyna-Tech+Frames+b...

The bits tick all the retro boxes but bear in mind that the "space shuttle" glue as used on the lugs is known to fail and come unbonded, I have seen a couple that have gone that way as someone else has mentioned up thread, they were the road frames though not the Dynatech M-Trax MTB like I owned. If you want a cheap hack buy a Decathlon as the others have suggested. On the steel Dynatech the tubes are unusual in that they rifle them like a gun barrel to remove material rather than the usual butting method to reduce weight. I wouldnt suggest cutting it half to check though.

For £50, I'd buy it just for the heck of it, especially in that colour.

A friend of mine did the Etape a few years ago on a similar vintage frame with a few upgrades.

My old lunchtime runabout has Shimano 300EX kit and that's mostly fine after quite a lot of years of minimal maintenance - main issue is the front brake caliper needs a good strip and clean.

I once had a date with a girl who'd never seen downtube shifters before! They're absolutely fine, one you get used to them.

This is what I think was called a Dynatech 500 or 700 at the time, 1989/1990. I remember this well because I had a Dynatech frame. Raleigh Special Products was the high-end part of Raleigh when Raleigh was still a going concern. Their Dynatech frames made a bit of a splash when they were released, I still have a glossy brochure somewhere.

The frames were constructed with various tubings glued into alloy lugs. The tubing here is likely  to be 501 cromoly steel. My two frames suffered with the pinned and glued joint of seatstays to seat cluster becoming loose. But if this frame is still sound after all these years that may not be a concern. Shimano 500EX was a low-end but decent group, the Tiagra of its day.

However: quill stem, downtube shifter, narrow rear spacing, thin handlebars - there's a lot of old tech on display. £50 if it's all working ok is fair enough and I'm sure that front mech only needs tweaking. But I don't think it's worth 'upgrading' this to make it into something it isn't. Bikes have moved on in so many ways that you might be better served spending £300 at Decathlon or wherever if you want something modern. Otherwise enjoy it for what it is. Cyclists managed with downtube shifters for decades after all, you'll soon get used to it.

Is that the one with some titanium tubing? If so, it's worth more than £50 just for the scrap value. I'd buy it in any case. The front mech can be adjusted most likely.

Going by the pic in the blog post below it looks like one of the entry level models but the review is good all the same.

http://silverryder.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/bicycle-my-first-bicycle-was-i...

Nice looking bike, and probably has upgrade potential, particularly to modern integrated gear/brake shifters.

Assuming the gears and brakes work well (they were good stuff new but can't tell anything  about condition now from those pics), the wheels are true, the frame is decent (I can't see what tubing it's made of but Dynatech suggests a decent standard) and it's the right size for you, then £50 seems a bargain.

What sort of riding would you plan on using it for?