Anybody heard of a Raleigh MT 500 Mountain Bike?

Question

I recently acquired a rusty old mountain bike I figured I'd spruce up and maybe sell or rip apart and sell the Shimano Deore components for cheap.

It's a Raleigh MT 500. If you don't want to do the research it's a 25 pound hardtail XC mountain bike with a "Technium" frame(steel lugs and aluminum frame). It has Deore XT SLR Plus Brakes, Deore XT rapid shifters (24 Speed), Deore LX front and rear derailleurs, and a Shimano Hyperglide C rear hub. The front fork suspension is Rock Shox Mag 10(which I just pumped up with my bike pump Sweet!)

The frame is in decent shape except for rusting on the chainstays and bottombracket and a tiny 1/8 crack near the bottom bracket.

The bike was free so I'm wondering if it's worth throwing new tires/tubes on it and selling it? Bikepedia sets the original 1994 retail price at $1,042. It was the second highest performance "MT" model at the time.

Now it's probably worth hardly anything and the MTB forum people won't answer me Help! please!

Answer 1

I have never seen the bike in question but know of it.

Bonding Chromoly lugs with aluminum was at an experimental stage at that time.

Bad idea as the two materials react at different rates to everything but made for a light nice riding frame as the rear stays were Cro-mo steel.Lugging the steel /aluminum at that time made for a frame that was about 1 1/2 pounds lighter than most comparable steel frames.

The reason the bike is so light is that is was offered as a full lx or full xt bike,meaning that all the parts were about as light as it gets at an affordable price range.[Suntour was still a competitor then]

The crack at the bottom bracket makes it useless as a frame to most unless they are a skilled bike frame welder.

{most would not try,sorry]

The components on the other hand are  totally classic mid to  top end Shimano gear.[yet not the best as the XTR was Shimano's best]

I would pay 100-150 dollars for the bike as is just for the components as I am a lover of that great old stuff.

My advice: Strip it down and sell all the parts.

I hope my mere opinion can be of some help to you.

p.s. the XT brake levers are the 'hotcakes'.The shifters are cool too.If they are not a combo then I think that they are sellable.