All parts are gonna either be new old stock Schwinn parts or handmade. It's gonna have hand bent forks with custom square twist support bars with some cragar knock offs weilded to the bolts and square twist sissy bar
Here i layed out paper I cut to replicate the sheet metal and now drawing the patterns on it to mock it up
So the last bike cherry pie was a traditional early 60s rod bike now this is the traditional early 70s lowrider bike. So I'm gonna replicate all the patterns metal flake and even relace the bike rims to look like star wire cragars
Got it moked up on two wheels next step is to get all the parts and after that sand blast weild and paint the frame
It's official. I'm getting the frame weilded and Bondo on Thanksgiving break and on Christmas break painting every kustom lowrider pattern from the 60s-70s
Sorry for the wait I finished most the weilding back in November while on Thanksgiving break not bad for a first time I guess. Gonna be painted soon but my goal is to have it finished by March but only bad news is that it's not gonna be called mellow yellow I'm saving that idea for a real Schwinn frame this one is a repop so im renaming it smooth get a way and painting it Kandy brown with murals and custom upholstery
Been awhile since I've been on here and alot has happened. So the frame that I welded never actually got painted until around now because it was just left untouched in a shop but I had my homie do all the Bondo on it and I'm gonna paint it while the cherry pie bike got a new crushed button tucked velvet seat. Also the primered frame is gonna be called the royal jester and basing it off of Larry Watsons rose mist
I remember you, actually! Good to see you're still at it. Curious, what do you like the most about all these different aspects of your build? Is it the entire build including the seat/frame/wheels ? IOW do you like working on all aspects? Or is that one area that peeks your interest more, like the welding/fabricating of metal, or the paint aspect, or the upholstery aspect? Just curious is all, this thread says "The new Larry Watson", and those are some big shoes to fill, IMO. He inspired a great deal of custom rods...some of the coolest in his day...I was trying to understand if you plan to move into auto at some point? And if so do you see yourself as building custom bodies? Each aspect really requires skills and the best people are the ones that typically focus on one or two aspects...it takes some time to master all of them by yourself. I'm 63 and I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up and looking for a job as I type...not saying my plan was bad, just that had I not done some smart things years ago, I would be in a horrible spot today. Never too early to start planning! Especially if you want to fill Watson's shoes, he inspired more than one generation!
Yea that's what all the OGs told me how to start. You work with the bikes first with the sheet metal the Bondo and putting the bike together and when your old enough you start with the cars. My favorite part of building the bikes is putting it all together and painting it (even though body work is sometimes a pain in the ass) but someday I want a traditional lowrider/kustom and a bombita which is a pre 54 lowrider I like to keep it old school I'm a one of a kind. Try finding another 14 year old that knows about Larry Watson and is actually into building and driving traditional kustoms
Vinny, I don't know anything about the bombitas, but I see you're in Texas and things vary from locale to locale. In SoCal during the 40s, a lowrider scene was create based on the pachucos who were Mexican derived. They kind of incorporated the zoot suit attire worn by many Mexican gangs in Southeast L.A., where I grew up. I didn't live there, but my family owned a liquor store between Watts and Compton. Elm St. was our local Mexican gang, and they provided a kind of protection for our store in exchange of selling them alcohol. Anyway, that type of Pendleton gangstar look was bred out of that area. Watson was also. Much of this association derives from the early 40s when the war was going on...a lot of strange stuff in America. The Mexican gangs hate the black gangs, so a lot of the fighting was based on dumb $#!T that someone said, or the clothes they were wearing, etc...I've know some pretty tough gang members who were good to me and friendly, but they were constantly in/out of county jail and prison. Cars were a way for them to express themselves in a way they could afford. And this is where the Impala was popularized. In fact, the GM plant around the corner from my family's liquor store at the time is where the Impalas were made, in the early 60s, they had 327s in many of them, so a lot of them have the infamous fuel injected 327. Even to this day in Cali, some of the best custom rods are done by the lowriders, even in the NorCal where I now live. These are a mixture of lowriders with many original restorations, like original engines, but lowered and possibly modified bodies, but 100% restores of Inline 6s in the old 40s and 50s cars. Many with hydraulics, scraping was done down Tweedy which pre-dated Downey Blvd. AFAIK. My family's liquor store was at Long Beach Blvd. and Tweedy. If you can learn to weld, I think it could prove to be more useful than bondo. The reason is many people don't want to use anymore bondo in their builds than they have to. Others don't mind and some of the best work uses at least some. But being able to weld new pieces onto body panels and basically reconstruct the panel is a very useful skill and if you can do that you can compliment it with some bondo. My recommendation is to target and do the best quality work you can do, and that's done with clean metal for many people, and certainly myself. You pretty much have your templates, so if you could cut them out cut a slightly larger piece of the same shape steel, you might be able to find a stump or other wood you could shape it with a ball peen. Then if you could grind the paint off your bike, tack weld it on and just keep tacking until it fills in, grind the tacks down to smooth metal...then paint it and Bob's your uncle. Now you can pinstripe it or keep customizing with paints...the word's your oyster. You need access to a welder though, but you could even use a stick welder which you can find cheap. So much with exhausts and custom mounts and brackets that need to be welded also. Enough rambling...best of luck with your future. As I tell my own kids, find something you love to do, something you have a passion for, if it's customs, learn how to do it so that when you wake up in the morning you look forward to going to work. You won't care about working overtime, you might not even care as much to how much you make, but you will be happier.
I think I finally made my mind up on what to do with this primered frame I know y'all are gonna love it
Almost forgot to put in here while I was away I got a real Schwinn frame it's a 59 speedster that I'm doing a traditional lowrider or late 60s kustom look to it called mellow yellow
Been awhile since I posted so here it goes. I did nothing much on the 59 but sand it more to bare metal. The rose mist frame is untouched just took it all apart. But on the other hand I finally got cherry pie to run after a year of sitting in the garage and in storage it was a coincidence that on Friday the 13th I was riding it and the master link on the chain snapped so it's idle again but I did at least fit the springer fork on it now that I reversed the control arms and bolts
Got some more parts while I was away. An original fort worth bike license plate and a original Schwinn mag sprocket
Not much this month too hot to do anything right now in fort worth where it's in the 100s and 90s all the time. I am Trying to score a set of original rims though from one of my homies
Well just learned something new about the Schwinn. I talked to one of my homies about a part being too big but when we looked up the serial number it turns out it wasn't a 59 at all but it was built on 4/20 of 1968. Nothing bad at all about it just makes it brand new for the era I'm building it around. Late 60s early 70s
So time for the monthly bike updates. I finally found a theme for the grey frame which is 1940s traditional kustom. I did some work on the parts for it and that included taking apart the crank and sprocket to get shined up and polished and also went out of the box for the springer spring and cut a quarter off of it like how the traditional cars would do in the 1940s and now I'm just waiting for the right time to paint the frame,fenders, and spring fork arms
Got the paint yesterday 1 can of primer and about 2 cans of paint and clear just need some sand paper and cool weather then it's time to shoot
Sanded it down and spraying the first coat of primer tonight and tomorrow sanding it out the imperfections and spraying again until it's ready for the actual color
The Jalopy Journal
