Ok, sooo for anyone who hasn't read my intro (which is probably most people) we started with this:
which i picked up off the side of the road. Didn't really know what it was or what to do with it, except that i want it to be a sort of cruiser and i want to put a bananna seat on it. haven't got that far yet, but i'm just sort of making it up as i go along.... I also want to spend as little money on this as possible, cuz it's really just something to keep me amused.
so i started by pulling it apart to clean it, in the middle of my family room floor, like so:
and then today, being about a hundred degrees Celsius outside (ok, 40) Charl (hubby) and i sat down and decided where we were going to start. I'd already decided i want to make it dark purple, and charl suggested, after seeing a thread on here where someone else painted their rims black, that sanding back most of my rusty chrome and painting black might be a better solution than buying all new bits.
so, i'm not a big fan of massive ape-hanger handle bars, so i thought if we just bended out the handle bars that came on it a bit, i'd probably be happy. but we didn't have a vise. so we first tried to bend them with me standing on them and charl levering them with a pole, but that didn't work, so we stuck them under the wheel of the car and tried again! that worked!
so we bent the middle apart a bit wider, and the actual handle bar bits that you hang onto, a bit flatter, and also a bit wider (make sense?)
then sanded back the rust, and hit it with some killrust in satin-black.
thus:
got a bit of a kink in it though.... might put some mirrors on there eventually to hide it
theeeen i was trying to sand back the rust on the wheels, and Charl suggested it might be easier without the spokes in, soooo we took them out (work out how to put them back later, hey?)
sanded, killrust (they're actually the same colour as the handlebars, weird lighting):
Also, spokes are a little bit rusty, but not too bad, so we're experimenting with making them purple, if it works out, great, if not, get some new ones.
sprocket is press-fitted to crank. the crank is not too badly rusted, so imma polish that up, masked the crank, painted the sprocket, also same colour as handle bars (please ignore dirty dog-bath in the background):
annnd also rebuilt the hubs today, but not photos of that... annnd, painted the wheel nuts:
so, that was it for today.
to be continued....
which i picked up off the side of the road. Didn't really know what it was or what to do with it, except that i want it to be a sort of cruiser and i want to put a bananna seat on it. haven't got that far yet, but i'm just sort of making it up as i go along.... I also want to spend as little money on this as possible, cuz it's really just something to keep me amused.
so i started by pulling it apart to clean it, in the middle of my family room floor, like so:
and then today, being about a hundred degrees Celsius outside (ok, 40) Charl (hubby) and i sat down and decided where we were going to start. I'd already decided i want to make it dark purple, and charl suggested, after seeing a thread on here where someone else painted their rims black, that sanding back most of my rusty chrome and painting black might be a better solution than buying all new bits.
so, i'm not a big fan of massive ape-hanger handle bars, so i thought if we just bended out the handle bars that came on it a bit, i'd probably be happy. but we didn't have a vise. so we first tried to bend them with me standing on them and charl levering them with a pole, but that didn't work, so we stuck them under the wheel of the car and tried again! that worked!
so we bent the middle apart a bit wider, and the actual handle bar bits that you hang onto, a bit flatter, and also a bit wider (make sense?)
then sanded back the rust, and hit it with some killrust in satin-black.
thus:
got a bit of a kink in it though.... might put some mirrors on there eventually to hide it
theeeen i was trying to sand back the rust on the wheels, and Charl suggested it might be easier without the spokes in, soooo we took them out (work out how to put them back later, hey?)
sanded, killrust (they're actually the same colour as the handlebars, weird lighting):
Also, spokes are a little bit rusty, but not too bad, so we're experimenting with making them purple, if it works out, great, if not, get some new ones.
sprocket is press-fitted to crank. the crank is not too badly rusted, so imma polish that up, masked the crank, painted the sprocket, also same colour as handle bars (please ignore dirty dog-bath in the background):
annnd also rebuilt the hubs today, but not photos of that... annnd, painted the wheel nuts:
so, that was it for today.
to be continued....