Bicycles?

any of you guys mess around with pedal bikes? ive always been a bike head & i just finished up a cool project. i found this 1938 JC higgins girls ballooner in the trash at the end of the summer. i spent very little money but quite a bit of time resto-rodding it for my girl. im pretty stoked about how it came out. aiside from all the dent pounding, rust grinding, bearing rebuilding & wheel relacing, i basically repainted it the same colors but i added some scallops on the fenders. im still waiting on the crazy skip tooth chain to come in the mail from ebay because the original one broke after pedaling about a block from my house.

before:

after:



lets face it. most of us on this site started wrenching way back in the day when all we had were bicycles to work on. i know i built my fair share of crazy, dangerous & ugly contraptions that could barely be considered a bike. either way, taking a piece of trash, be it an old junky bike in the trash or a forgotten classic car behind some barn & turning it into something really cool & functional is always a good feeling. lets see some pics!

 

Nice resto...........

Bill

 

I have 25 of em hanging in the shop, just waiting to be redone. Someday....

 

Nice work... check with fomocomofo here on the hamb... he is the bike guru!

 

ha - i dig that motorized rig.

i always wanted to get one of those cheesey little go kart frames & set it up with a junkyard 4 banger from an old jap bike. wheelie machine!!

 

i sold most of my bikes last year, but hung onto a few of my favorites, a purple murray 20" with some wicked add-ons, a 26" western flyer (w/tank) bobber style bike, my ashtabula from the 70's and a roger decoster...

 

theres been a few bike threads here in the past, heres one i started a few months back...
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=65632
yours looks real nice!

 

hey thanks man - and thanks for that link. lots of cool pedalers on here!

 

Bikes! Awesome resto, and a killer find!

I always keep a 20" pit bike around. I had a sizeable musclebike and old school freestyle bike collection that I sold off. I had a Sears Screamer with a coaster-brake five spoke mag like the one in the ads, that was pretty rare.

Right now I am tinkering with a Huffy Mono-shock frame. I am hunting a "rat trap" springer fork for a 20" bike with the long 26" steer tube. If anyone knows where I can find one please let me know. I've had a couple in the past, but sold them.

I'm also slowly fixing up my mid-school (late 90's) free style bike. I have a Basic Bike Company STH, and I just found the BBC Maple Leaf sprocket that I've been hunting for several years.

 

Hey, Hemi...what happened to your old avatar???

 

I dunno, I'll have to look for it....right now I'm incognito.

Edit: Found it, now I remember, it was too big for the new board settings, and it's an animated gif...

 

You ever finish that trike you got at CHRR?


jerry

 

I posted mine up here before, but it's buried back in one of those other threads.

1995-ish Dyno Coaster. Immediately replaced the gooseneck with a Dyno BMX pillow-block stem because the stocker couldn't hold the bars in place, and it deflected so bad when I tightened it up that it snapped the bolts. Soon thereafter, I bought some chrome Schwinn fenders with the "flip" and hacked the rear one down to "bobber" dimensions. I also swapped the cheap Taiwanese springer for a genuine Schwinn Black Phantom unit. The Dyno crank bent under the excessive force generated by my manly legs, so it's sporting a Tioga 175mm unit now. The tank bag was designed and stitched up with my own two hands.

 

Ha ha! Mr. Jerry, that IS old school! I tinkered with it for a bit, but decided it needed too much and I didn't have the room to work on it. I threw that huge thing in the dumpster one night, and the next morning it was gone.

On another note, sorry to hear about your truck...

 

About 12 years ago i did a "resto-rod" to a '51 Murray
http://www.ucalgary.ca/~mdsiewer/cycle/murray.html

Then this past year I slapped an engine onto a '50 CCM while my brother did the same to a Wally World chopper
http://1149.ca/bike

Mike

 

the last bike i bought was a 20's sunbeam had to run the guy down cause i wanted it so bad, as rough and ugly as it was. paid 75.00 for it (thought i got ripped off, but whatever) sat on it and rode it a bunch. now it turns out that the damn thing is worth like 700 pounds! i guess the dirty limeys like'em.

old bikes are cool, i posted a pic of one in the back of some old 1917 buick that had been converted into a truck...

 

My own diversion from "hot rod overload" is Schwinn bicycles. Here's a few in my bedroom. The red & green Junior Stingrays were sold in the same store the same month (Dec. '71) and the green one was my first bike- I always wished it was red and I found my bike's brother on e-bay. The red one started the collecting sickness and now I have 20 more Stingrays. I collect '65 & '66s. The other's in the picture are a Violet '66 Standard, a Violet '66 3-speed Stik, a Coppertone '66 2-speed, a Blue '66 2-speed (made the month I was born), a Blue '65 Deluxe trigger 3-speed and a Blue '65 J-33 with factory springer front end. Also have a 3 more "birthday bikes" a Coppertone and a Blue Oct. 66 3-speed Stik-Shift and a Coppertone Junior- and just rounded up all the pieces for a Coppertone '65 Super Deluxe. Have a bunch more, but the original paint '65 & '66s are my favorites. REALLY looking for Flamboyant Lime '65 Stingray and anyother original paint Stingrays.

 

Wow! I would have never have guessed. Nice collection! The coppertone ones are my favorites...such a great color.

 

Yeah, I just got a Coppertone girls '66 that looks like it just came out of the box. I have all the pieces for the bikes in the picture- just waiting to put them together in case I find nicer (NOS) pieces.

 

76 Schwinn Project

 

Bicycles are fun, and addictive. I have 60 or 80 or so. They fill the loft of the barn, and hang from the rafters below. The oldest is 1878. But there are modern road and mountain bikes too. I like weird stuff, too. Five different lever drive bicycles, and 5 or 6 shaft drive bikes. Old ballon bikes, early pneumatics, 26 and 28 inch adult tricycles, tandems, homebrew contraptions that are hard to ride, etc. I built a 50 inch ordinary (big wheel) to train folks to ride on. That means no risk to the old crap. One neighbor crashed two of my originals learning, so I built it just so he could learn to ride without screwing up the real deal. One fun bike has offset laced hubs, so it hops up and down as it rolls. Kids love it! If it's got wheels, it's gotta have some fun in it somewhere!

 

..finnaly, something I can flaunt my useless knowledge on!!!..that bike is actually a Elgin..there is no such thing as a 38 J C Higgins...both Elgin and Higgins were sold by Sears stores..Elgin is pre-war, Higgins (named after Sear's accountant) is post war...check out this site for some great info;

http://www.nostalgic.net/

 

Here's my lil side project for the moment. It's for my cousin it's his first lowrider bike. It was a SCHWINN girls bike with the twin down tubes. He wanted a coffin style tank so this is what I whipped up. I just painted it black. Now I just have to pinstripe it and it's out the door.
I have a bunch of other bike projects goin on all the time.
I'll try and post more pics.

 

Hey JimA. I have one of the really small versions of the Scwhinn made for toddlers etc. It has a removable crossbar , so it could be a girl's bike or a boy's bike. It has solid rubber tires. Know any history on them? My dad bought it for my late sister when she was really small. Probably 1974ish? Any good websites that could identify?

 

here's one i have for sale on the classifieds board....

link to the thread...
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81386

 

Mine...

 

Some where in the shop I have a 46 roadmaster,with ft wheel drum brakes. I also have the 46 whizzer on it. some day i hope to get it going. on another bike, I rode the whizzer eng in 49 ,for doing things around a neighbors farm.

 

Heres an old Arnold Schwinn with a whizzer conversion.

 

That's probably a "Tiger"- if it had blow up tires it would be a "Pixie". Check out www.schwinnbike.com , but I warn you it's ADDICTIVE! So many of us love to relive our youth and it's REALLY easy to get sucked in by these bikes.

 

hey jay - thanks for the info. i had a hard time trying to figure out what the hell this thing was. higgins was an educated guess from what i researched on the net. its got an eclipse/morrow rear hub so i guess its late 30s & the 38s i saw on the net had that same front sprocket. Elgin - eh? Who knows if I even got the year right - haha. either way, its old & is no longer a piece of trash.

i cant beleive how many killer bikes you guys have. yeah, i do the modern stuff to - klein road bike - surly 1 X 1 mountain bike - Fit series one BMX & my commuter is a 67 schwinn speedster that i also found in the trash, totally complete!