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I've had chromed motorcycle rims powder coated, and they seem to stand up pretty well to the usual chain lube/bug splatter/road debris nicks and dings. Not sure if they'd offer all that great a surface for braking. But then again, taking a bicycle rim, polishing it mirror-smooth, plating it...

yeah, I remember those from around '76. Gotta love the zinc plated headset parts (chrome was obviously too expensive to meet the price point). And I also remember laughing about the "Free Spirit" name, as that was also (previously) used by a bra company for their product.

The sad part is that you'll probably never get another hardware store like that. If your town is like most you'll end up with a Wal-Mart where the person in the hardware department won't even know why you'd want to bleach wood, and ask if you've tried using Clorox.

The rubber in tires contains volatile compounds that actually evaporate out over time, making the rubber hard. Heat speeds this process, so yeah, the rafters or attic aren't particularly great places to store tires. Rubber is also negatively affected by UV light, and by ozone. So you want to...

Red anodized rims are great on a bike that you keep parked in your living room (and presumably away from any large windows). But anodizing fades pretty quickly under UV light, so if you plan on actually riding the bike and leaving it outdoors you can depend on winding up with blotchy pink rims...

We had one of those in old Mad Jack Lennan's bike shop in Fremont. Worked well enough if the bike had been run straight into the side of a car or a brick wall or something. But if the fork was tweaked (one side bent farther back than the other) all it did was shift the distortion to a...

[rant mode] This is the exact same sort of idiocy that Harley Davidson is pandering- the factory-built bobber like their Nightster or Night Train or Night Sweats or whatever they call it. For a mere $15K you too can have a bike that was made to look like you threw it together out of junker...

Those are beyond cool...

Absolutely. It's big, it's green, it's gawdawful heavy, and it'll likely go through 37 different permutations before I'm through tinkering with it. What else could I call it?

Had a bit of time to do some scrounging and work on the Monster. Hit up the local bike shop, scored a set of brand new but shipping damaged fenders. Like an idiot I didn't take any "before" shots, suffice to say they were nice and shiny two-tone green & white that didn't match the bike in any...

and it just gets worse... viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8703&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a#p88818 Does anyone know if this issue got rectified?

There are a bunch of bicycle-related articles in Popular Mechanics. You can dig around through old issues here http://blog.modernmechanix.com/ Among the oddball and historic stuff: The French do things in an unusual manner: Whatever happened to the New Departure 3-speed rear sprocket? The...

Okay, my first (and probably last, judging by my wife's "Not another project!" attitude) build. Had some 26" wheels and whitewalls and some nice retro handlebars laying around from another bike project that didn't turn out as well as I would have liked (making a rat rod out of a discarded...

Maybe scout around for a larger, older business that's folding up (not like there are any of those in the central valley) and see if they've got any they'd be willing to part with? For that matter, I wonder if you could find something from Worksman Cycle or a similar company that would be...

Only bicycles at this point are the Schwinn Speedster I'm starting to build (see "Paint or Preserve" post in the Bike Talk section) and an unremarkable aluminum-framed Pacific Vector that I picked up at Target several years ago. Now if you want to talk motorcycles... My '82 Honda CM450E...

So I got to thinking and I remembered that when old Mad Jack Lennan sold his shop he had a few Schwinn decals laying around that he threw out (he'd lost his Schwinn franchise years earlier). I dug 'em out of the trash and put 'em in a folder. Have been carting them around for 30 years now...

That couldn't be anything other than a locking beer cooler on the back, right?

I used to overhaul S3Cs without the benefit of an exploded diagram back in the day... are these substantially worse? Does anyone have an exploded diagram posted anywhere on the 'net?

I was hoping to find a Sturmey-Archer S3C but you know the old saying about beggars and choosers. Oh well, if the 333 unit detonates, re-lacing the rear wheel isn't that annoying if you're watching a movie and having a beer...

I worked at Jack Lennan's bike shop after old Jack moved it from Glenmoor to behind Capwell's by the BART station. Jack had the Schwinn franchise in town for a long, long time but eventually lost it when everyone started buying lightweight European bikes (Peugeot, Gitane, Motobecane, etc. and...