My 6yr old sons first build-The Flying Tiger Shark.

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Ldog33

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Found this bike on CL, guy wanted 35 bucks for it, traded an old frame I had that I was never going to use, he got a better deal, but I saved some bucks, kind of. The reason I picked this bike is that my son wanted a bike that looked like my Felt and this is about as close as I could get.
 
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It's a very early 20" AMF Roadmaster Satellite Convertible bike from the 50's, not sure what year, but it's pretty old and I'm amazed the shape it was in. That is until we started taking it apart. As you can see we started this during x-mas, was one of his presents.
 
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Since it was freezing out, the parts were put into the closet and the ordering began. Fast forward to May when we finally had some decent weather. The bike has a very skinny seat post that is attached to the org. Troxel seat so instead of just buying a new post/seat we had to make do. The red/white seat wasn't going to work, found some black vinyl dye and off we went. I let him spray the first coat on the ground after I showed him how, then Pokémon came on and I did the rest.

 
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The wheels were org. 20" with 20 spokes that were bent and had to go, I was able to keep the tubes though. I'm actually amazed that I can fit 2.3 inch wide tires on the rear of this tiny bike, with room to spare. He wanted wheels like my Ruff, black rims and hub, silver spokes and I found these...

He gave me the thumbs up, 1 week later I had them along with the tires I found on ebay.
 
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The fork was also bent to all heck and with the new wheels/tires we bought, it had to go as well, new wheels/tires are way to wide. I showed him a few pics of some forks that would fit and he picked this one..

Thank god, cause it was cheap as this bike is getting expensive.
 
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A few more things to get out of the way. I was trying to save as much as possible, but once we took it all apart it was evident that it was a mess. Bottom bracket and headset were out-bearings were toast; gooseneck was out but only because it was to big for the new fork. Kickstand-out, darn thing weighed a ton. Fenders were not org. and scrapped on the tires, they were goners as well. I wanted to keep the crank and sprocket but he wanted something that looked like my Felts, black arms, black and chrome sprocket. Was not easy finding black arms that were 4 1/2 inches long, sprocket was easy-ebay has it all. He picked out the valve caps. Paint, he wanted it painted blue just like my Felt, which is pretty much the same color scheme as a car I have=blk/blu. I bought one can, painted the fork, nope he didn't like it, bought another, bingo. More on color later.
 
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Now came the fun part.. The paint had to go, two coats of aircraft stripper and about 95% was gone. I then went over it with wire wheels to get all the other paint off, followed by steel wool. This process took an entire day. Here is the funny part. My son has an Easton aluminum bat that is not painted and has a motif on it from a p-51 tiger shark. He says to me after I have it all sanded, "Dad, can we make it look like my bat?" I ask him does he mean that he likes it the way it looks now, no blue paint? He says that it looks rad that way!

So no blue paint, raw metal bike, which I think is cool as heck as well. Here are all of the pieces with new cups, and after I coated them with Gibbs.
 
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The bike is almost done, the chain guard does not fit because of the wider tires, need to notch it. We went a little hog wild on the handle bars-cut the heck out of them, and put on some old school black foam mbx grips. Decals are on order, will post pics when done. Here's the biggest bummer, his feet barely touch the floor while on the seat so he needs to grow a tad more before he will feel comfortable.
 
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I love the look of concentration as he puts on the pedal.
Great build and story!
 

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