Bare Metal Dents and Dings

Over the summer, given the weather was so lovely, I was riding bikes rather than fixing them up. Now it's not as nice, I've found myself tackling the Cruiser again. The paintwork was very chipped and as well as one dent in the main cross tube, there were many dents in the mud guards. New mud guards cost over £70 (inc. shipping) so going to see how both these work out with some car body filler and sanding.

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Starting to take shape

One week after the clear coat was applied, I can start to put the bike back together....well with the bits that I have, even if they are temporarily off of one of my other bikes. The forks, brake callipers and modified original handlebars all went back on nicely, but when I started to size up the outer brake cables, it was clear that the cyclocross levers were not going to work. I bit of polishing on the original Weinmann levers and I actually think these look so much better. Still a list of thing to source, but starting to look really good...

Decals and Handlebar Tape

I think I am trying too hard to be a perfectionist. After wet sanding the gloss coat ready for the decals, I sanded a little to heavy, or in some places the gloss coat was too thin. The up shot was that I sanded back slightly too much and in two places you could see the metal shining through. The consequence was, more sanding, more painting, hey ho. However, by the end of today I had flattened out the paint ready for the lacquer, but before I do that next week end, I was able to put the decals on. These are a replica of the ones on the original frame and I think they set the colour of really well... In between odd jobs I also wrapped the handle bars with some nice leather look bar tape...

And the bike is done...

The last few weeks have been a waiting game, the last few items ordered online have taken their time to arrive, the last being the brake cable end stops. So while I had everything else together, I had no way of using the brakes. Now that it's all together and the first shake down ride complete, I am very pleased with this project. What do you think? It's been a great project to do over the past three months, i've learnt a lot: Stripping the bike down and removing the paint took longer than I had imagined You use a lot more paint that you think, in fact I would say that I could have done more coats of paint, or been better at those that I applied Finding the right bottom bracket axle, front chainring combination is hard, in fact, I am not entirely satisfied with what I ended up with, but it works The single speed conversion hub is a genius pice of kit! Cyclecross in-line brake levers are no good if you want to have a front and bac...

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