What a Concept 5

Issue 5 of the What a Concept Post.  There is always something fantastic or ridiculous on the drawing boards of conceptual designers, artists, and engineers.  As always it is only a matter of time before those aimed at cycling end up here to be reviewed with honest unbiased focus on relevance and usefulness. Here are this weeks contestants.

Finally!

After searching for some time, and finding a ton of long term bicycle projects, or near ride-able bicycles for my girls, I have finally found my own.  While checking the local thrift shop for parts, I ran right into some new donated bikes.  Usually the only bicycles they get are really crappy kids bikes or the Frankenstein huffy hand me downs.  At times they have parts that are replaced or upgraded by someone, or the occasional garage clean out that nobody knew what the parts were for. This time, I found a red Schwinn Varsity.  A mens frame, almost a perfect fit.  Now the price was tricky.  The other bikes there were marked at $15 on a sticker placed on the seats, and were not even worth that much in parts.  The Schwinn had no such sticker.  After pulling the bike out, and checking it over, I found a price sticker stuck to the headlight.  $4.00!!!  I was in my car, loaded and driving away with 3 minutes.  My new Schwinn perched behind me in my minivan.

A few nicks, and decal wear, and after some minor polishing

The crank was the only flaw.  It was bent on the left side.  After a visit to the Ant cave, I removed one from the old brown varsity.  The spokes were all loose, and the rims warped and weird.  After re-truing the rims by hand (no stand yet, I am on a tight budget) I set them in and checked them with a dial indicator mounted to the chainstays. With lots of rust removal on the rims, new tubes and tires, handlebar tape (for some reason the original Schwinn handlebar tape even in horrid condition photographs well), a planet bike rear rack, and some grease in the bearings...  here it is.

It rides and shifts like a dream.  After years of indexed shifting, I love returning to friction shifting.  It is likened to the difference between the Millennium Falcon and the Starship Enterprise (next Gen).  It is better to nudge or tweak an adjustment on the go, rather than having to stop and make several technical adjustments.  So yeah the Enterprise is cool and sleek, but nothing beats hitting the dash to fix the problem.

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Little Green Varsity

It may not look bad now, but the polishing was already started.

My youngest daughter adopted the green Schwinn varsity that I found in the farmers pile mentioned in an earlier post.  A lot of surface rust on the rims and chrome.  some nicks and scratches, bad tires, porous tubes, and the original chain ring was bent.  We dug out another varsity, a brown one that was in the same pile, only slightly larger frame, and began swapping the good for the bad.  She polished the parts up with steel wool, and I serviced the bottom bracket and headset.