Tuesday, February 15, 2011

FAT TIRE...
Wow... So much to get caught up on... been slacking on my blogging duties for far too long now. Just got back from LA, but before I get in to any of that I want to do a few posts to get you all caught up on a few of the projects I've been working on over the winter. I've had a bit of time off and had a chance to focus on a few non-animation projects. Since moving out of the city to the Hudson Valley I've found myself more and more picking up new projects/hobbies, just for the simple fact that now I finally have space to work on them. The most recent of these hobbies is bike restorations. I was lucky enough to come across a few great old tank bicycles over the past few months and figured it would be a fun project to restore them. I had no idea how much I would actually enjoy it! I am learning quite a bit, not only about how these bikes work but also about their history. My most recent acquisition was this beautiful early 50's Schwinn Streamliner... Here are a few pics of the restoration...

Here it is in it's original condition before I restored it. At this point I had already taken off the horn tank and the handlebars...




Here I started to mask off and paint the horn tank...


As you can see the bike didn't have fenders when I got it so I had to order some new reproductions which came in solid black. I repainted everything myself using pinstriping tape for some of the tight details...




The seat was pretty destroyed once I started to take it apart...




I wanted to give it new padding and I actually reupholstered it myself using a nice faux leather fabric and some seat foam...




I was without a camera for a good chunk of the restoration, so I'm going to jump straight to the after pictures...
The bicycle was missing a few parts like the rear rack. I tracked down an old 26" Schwinn Ladies Hornet rack which is the same make as was on the Streamliner and painted it to match...


Here is a pic of the chainguard with new paint and decals. I was able to clean up and salvage the skiptooth chain, so I was pretty stoked about that. I swapped out the old beat up pedals with these sweet teardrop ones...


Here's the painted horn tank complete with Schwinn decal...




I was also able to salvage the rims, but it took a ton of work to get them to look this good... there was so much rust and paint that needed to come off...




Flipped the handlebars to give it more of a motorcycle look. The handlebars I swapped out as well because the original seemed to have a bend in them. The ones on the bike now are used and I really had to clean them up to get all of the rust off and give them that shine. The truss rods and clamp are new as well, I believe they are reproductions. Headlamp also new.
Added new grips to top it all off. Once I finish painting the Schwinn headbadge I can throw that on as well

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Holy moly that looks amazing! Do you sell the bikes that you restore?

4:22 AM  

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