Friday, October 8, 2010

Winter Commuter Project Bike: Day 3

Took the bike down to get sandblasted (in prep for powder coating) at Keystone Stripping today. The place looked pretty sketch, but the guys that worked there looked like they had been doing it all their lives, so that made me feel better. Dropped the bike off before work, and am looking forward to seeing it clean and ready.

Here is before I started taking it apart last night.

Trek: Old School Style
Mmm... Love me some nice looking lugs...
Lugs on the bottom bracket
Finally disassembled! Took me about an hour and some serious grunting to just remove the fork, headset, and some braze-ons. They were rusted on from who knows how many years of never moving. 
And strapped to my bike, ready to go get sand blasted.

Side note: Serial number is 449133. Anyone have any idea how old this might be? My guess is 1979 or 78 based on some preliminary research.

Cant wait until the blasting and powder coating to get done. More pics to come!



4 comments:

  1. Hope you haven't left yet! It looks like you still have your headset cups installed. I'm not sure what sandblasting will do to those cups, but hopefully the guys working on it will cover up the inside part, otherwise you're looking at needing a new headset.

    From the looks of the frame, it's an early to mid 90's mountain bike. It'll make one bomb proof commuter, but just make sure to rust proof the insides of the tubes before you put it back together again. That frame will take an add on to make it a single speed, but it's doable.

    Keep us posted on the bike's progress. Should be interesting!

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  2. munsoned,

    I did tape the head cups for the blasting, thanks for the warning though.

    Can you provide more details on rust-proofing the inside of the frame and what add on I will need for the single? I cant just put a single speed cog onto a wheel on that frame?

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  3. Ah, good on ya for saving your headset. It would've been really annoying to remove and re-install the headset, but from your worries about the sand blasters shop, I was just concerned how careful they would be with your stuff.

    For rust proofing, the old stand-by stuff is JP Weigle's Frame Saver. There are many other brands out there, so use anything that's available, but do so before the winter hits. Surly has a good write up about it on the lower part of that link.

    With regard to single-izing your bike, you might get lucky with the right cog size/chaingring size/chain length to provide just enough chain tension, and there's a couple sites out there to help you find the "magic gear," but it's easier to have a chain tensioner in case you want to change cogs on a whim. I have a spare Rennen Rollenlager that you could try to see if you like it. There are many other tensioners though.

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  4. Nice work, Ben. I love the lugged look, too.

    You're also in good hand with Munson reading your blog. He has a wealth of information on practice, techniques, innovation and mechanics.

    Since the dropouts are vertical, there's no way to move the axle back and forth to snug up the chain. A chain tensioner will work like a derailleur to keep out slack in a chain on a bike with vertical dropouts.

    Good luck and keep us posted!

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