# 1953 Huffy 24" (model 250?) cleanup



## bloo (May 27, 2021)

I've posted pics of this before, but finally got around to tearing it down. I have had it since I was little kid, and with the badge and chainguard missing, never knew what brand it was. Cabers identified it as a 1953 Huffy.






It looks like it might be a model 250, hiding in the upper right of this catalog page, posted here on the CABE from 1952.





I have been collecting parts from the classifieds here and from Ebay to help with some of the things I know are screwed up. Spoiler: almost everything is screwed up. Parts have been trickling in. I tore it all down and cleaned it up.





Despite it's looks it has been indoors all these years, and doesn't look a bit different than it did in 1970. Then I assumed it was all rust. A lot of it is, but there is some brown paint too.... Well, I guess Mead did that as well.

Here is one sold by @kirk thomas back in 2016, probably a year older and in much better shape.





Oh look.... it used to be maroon. I had no idea. That must have been really nice looking when it was new, maroon with cream darts and green pins.


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## bloo (May 28, 2021)

Got the rims cleaned up, replaced the broken spokes and trued them, overhauled the hubs and got some new tires. They came out great, except the New Departure rear hub. It still seems to have problems, but I'll address that later. New tires are mounted. I think this is Korean war chrome. If so, there's a clear coat on it. They look about like they did in the 70s... dull silver.








The rear fender did not want to come off. Someone had re-brazed the chainstay bridge, didn't even get it straight, and brazed the tail of the fender on. I had to melt that off, and since it was split, repair the tip of the fender. I mean... Seriously?






It was covered in brass, so I just used some more brass.





There are a lot of really bad braze repairs on this bike, some of the worst of which are on the frame. More on that later. Next the fenders needed straightening, and since the stays on the back fender were brazed on (yes, really), I didn't think I could get enough of it off to have them rolled.





The lower one isn't even a fender stay... It is just some random piece of metal. I worked them over with a hammer and dolly. They looked really wide, but as it turns out they are about normal width but really really deep. In retrospect, I don't know if rolling would have worked anyway.

Before:





After:


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## bloo (May 28, 2021)

One thing hanging over my head is what to do about the seatpost. This frame has been broken and brazed back together, badly, in several places. This is the worst one. 






This frame uses Huffy's "Fits Sooner" seat post, meaning there is no seat post clamp, nor any place to put one, and the seat post is supposed to lock in place with a long bolt and a wedge, like a stem. It is bent and there is no bolt in it. Furthermore, after trying to fight it out of there I realized that that old braze job shrunk the tubing, and shrunk it a lot. I don't think that post is coming out of there no matter what, but it is just loose enough to be annoying. Surprisingly,  the wedge was still inside and fell out of the bottom bracket while I was horsing around on the seatpost. The plan is for a really long "FIts Sooner" bolt so I can reach up and start the wedge from the bottom side.





Braze it together and,,,,





And... It tightened up. It looks like it is going to work. It really should have some kind of a bushing to keep the bolt centered, but that is for another day.


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## Pondo (May 29, 2021)

Cool bike.  It's also cool that you've had it for so many years.  The rebuild is looking good so far.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes along.  Nice work!


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## bloo (May 29, 2021)

The long "Fits Sooner" bolt worked... but it didn't work. It seemed to lock the post, but there was not enough sticking out for the saddle to clamp on properly. That explains why the saddle mounting parts were all screwed up. Time for a plan "b" on the seat post.

Meanwhile, I have been straightening the fork over the last few days. It was pretty badly bent as you can see in the first post, and the steerer tube was curved. I had the steerer tube pretty close to straight a day or 2 ago and the fork tubes pointing in right direction at least 2/3 of the way down. Below that they may need more work. Earlier today I got the steerer tube the rest of the way straight. The fork spins now with no runout at the top headset bearing. The crown race was fairly shot, but a new one came in the mail today, a Wald. It was the only one I could find with a steep angle like the original. I hope it fits. Maybe the headset was Wald. Nothing else in it looks like the current Wald stuff.

I made a new discovery though, the stem wedge is stripped. Apparently the bent steerer tube was the only thing holding the stem in. Off to the classifieds I go....


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## bloo (May 31, 2021)

I decided to try to pull the seat post up. There was threaded rod left over from making that "Fits Sooner" bolt, so I threaded a nylock on it from the bottom, with the idea that hopefully it would get stuck where the seat post necks down to a smaller size. I cut as much of the brazing booger out of the way as possible, put a big socket up on top, some greased washers and a nut and started pulling the post up. I figured I needed about 1/4". I got 1/2" easily, so I just kept staclking things on top and pulling. Eventually I got the post all the way out. The part of the brazing booger I couldn't get out of the way mangled the seat post some more, but it was already a bent up mess and probably beyond saving. Yesterday afternoon one like it popped up on Ebay and I got it. Now I need to grind the booger out of the inside of the seat tube so the new seat post will go in when it gets here. @Gordon found me a stem wedge, so that problem is solved. Today's project will probably be to see how straight the frame is, and straighten it if it is bent. More to come....


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## bloo (Jun 2, 2021)

So I began to check the straghtness of the frame, using Sheldon Brown's method with the strings, as shown here. This method has served me well in the past:

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/frame-spacing.html





But, that is just for the right/left position of the rear triangle. First you have to verify that the seatpost is perpendicular to the bottom bracket, and that the headtube is parallel to the seat tube.

A quick check with an old aluminum concrete level seated on the bottom bracket face showed that on the left side, as the seat tube went up it got closer to the level, and on the right side as the seat tube went up it got..... closer to the level.

WTF?!!

The faces of the bottom bracket are not parallel to each other. Annoying, but not terribly surprising considering the cups were spinning in the bottom bracket shell. I'll have to fix it with a file I guess, just one more thing to do.

The headtube is also out of line with the seat tube. Only a tiny bit, but you can sight it and see. At this point, I decided to go ahead and check the rear triangle with the strings to see how good or bad it was. It was off to the left significantly. Not a ridiculous amount, but bad enough that it definitely needed to be corrected. Also the rear forks were not parallel to each other.

Ok, now I am officially surprised. This bike always went straight back in the day, and was super easy to ride with no hands. Correcting the bottom bracket wont go quickly, and twisting the headtube back straight is one of those things you really want to get right on the first try. I decided to pull the rear triangle back a little closer to where it needs to be. It pulled right in and was looking pretty good. Then I noticed this:





What is this, hard mode? 🤣

There's already enough brass here to build 3 frames. I guess a little more wont hurt, right?


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## Pondo (Jun 2, 2021)

You've got your work cut out for you on this one.  It will be very rewarding to get your old bike back up and running though.  It's a good start!


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## bloo (Jun 6, 2021)

The cure for everything on this bike seems to be more brass... Here's the repair. Not professional i guess, but considerably better than the old blob it is adjacent to. Speaking of the old blob, it turned out to be mostly steel. Apparently someone did a really ugly weld, broke the frame again, and then brazed it together afterward.





I ground the booger out that was preventing the seat post from coming up. That part was all steel.










The new seatpost from ebay arrived.





I mentioned earlier that the bottom bracket faces were out of square. The cups had been spinning in the tube. You can see more old braze repairs here..





It was not safe to assume the seat tube was in straight, so I took this over to a friends machine shop and checked it with a big square. Much to my surprise it was straight when checked against the bottom surface of the bottom bracket, so filing until the seat tube is parallel should fix it. The bottom tube however was not quite as straight. When checking with the concrete level with a straightedge, the tube was a little closer on one side than the other. The bottom bracket faces were slightly out of square front to rear as well. The question then is, how much of it is due to the bottom tube being bent or re-brazed not quite square, and how much is due to the bottom bracket faces being worn out of square. Before filing on the bottom bracket more I needed to know. 

I figured I would put the bottom bracket together, tighten the bearings up, and put the level on the chainwheel and measure from that. That has to be perpendicular to the bottom bracket. Cant miss right?

I assembled it with the crank and all the nice bottom bracket parts I got from @kirk thomas , everything except the chainwheel, which is still the original one from the bike. The level didn't lay flat. A quick spin of the chainwheel confirmed it was really bent. It was wobbling back and forth, and not in a way you could hit it with a shot hammer and straighten. It was wavy, and there were teeth pointing in random directions. LOL! Am I on candid camera or something? 🤣 You can't make this up.


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## bloo (Jun 8, 2021)

After about a half hour of prying and bending with bars, crescent wrenches and so on the chainwheel ran pretty true. I didn't measure it but probably less than .015" axial runout. I still didn't trust it for taking any frame dimensions though, so it was back to my friend's machine shop to use the big square again. I was able to determine that the down tube pointed slightly to the right in relation to the crank, and straighten it, at the same time taking out the twist I noticed earlier, and bringing the headtube back parallel to the seat tube. The front triangle looks good now, and the rear is not horrid. The bottom bracket shell has been filed and is square to itself. With the front triangle straight, I took it back home for more work on the rear with the string method.

A quick string check says it isn't too bad, only out by a couple of millimeters, and the hub spacing is right on at 111mm. Since the rear forks are not square, I decided to fix that first, and then see how the hub spacing and strings look. 





I got that pretty close and was checking with the strings again and.... What is THAT? Is that another CRACK?





LOL! 🤪  Whatever it is I can see through it.


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## bloo (Jun 9, 2021)

The cure, it seems, for crappy brazing is.... more crappy brazing. It looks like this now.






Meanwhile, on today's episode of "Whack a Mole" we have the rear axle adjusters:





These were all twisted up, and when I disassembled the bike I had to do quite a bit of bending on them with various implements of destruction to even get them to come out. As you can see they are straighter but still not straight. Huffman, like Schwinn used a screwball thread for these so there were no sleeve nuts or anything like that at the hardware store to fit them. I had to use the 2 square nuts that fit in the frame for the straightening. I screwed one screw into both nuts and clamped the nuts in a vise, then ran them in one or 2 threads at a time and hit them with a shot hammer to straighten them up as they went in. Looking a little better now:





But, as you can see one has jagged edges at the tip and the other one is sharpened like a pencil. This is because it was so bent it was crammed between the axle and the dropout instead of butting against the axle as designed. What to do about it? More brazing obviously. 🤣 I just need to decide whether to use brass or silver. I'm leaning toward silver.


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## bloo (Jun 9, 2021)

All better...


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## bloo (Jun 10, 2021)

After a bunch of cleaning and a little sanding on the inside of the seat tube, the replacement "fits sooner" seat post almost fits. I greased the crap out of the inside of the tube too. There was a lot of grease in there when I tore the bike down. Rust prevention? Or maybe just to keep the seat post from getting stuck? Anyway the new post doesn't exactly go without coaxing due to the fact that it has a tiny bend, and the fact that the seat tube is shrunk in diameter and a little warped. After working with it a bit, the post goes all the way up and down with a little twisting. I'm calling it a win.






The saddle itself isn't doing so well. In another thread @rustjunkie showed me whats wrong with these seat guts. 





I straightened all the parts, so I thought, and that made them fit the seat chassis properly. Once on the bike though, it still slipped horrible and as you can see in the assembled picture it isn't even grabbing at the top. I'll probably try shrinking it, but in all likelihood I'll just have to advertise for some Troxel seat guts.

Now I am back to Sheldon Brown's strings. Surprisingly the rear triangle wasn't that far out of line. I lined up the rear forks with each other, because they were way off.






And then pulled the rear triangle in line. It didn't need to move much, but getting the triangle aligned, the rear forks parallel, and the spacing for the ND hub (111mm) all really close to correct at the same time took a little iteration.





The rear triangle is now within 0.5mm at the seat tube! 23.00 vs 23.41! 





Looking good!





With the frame straight enough to measure from, I can finish straightening the fork. That's next.


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## bloo (Jun 12, 2021)

With the fork back on, not surprisingly, some more issues appeared. The first of which is that the rear triangle on the frame may have twist, or to put it another way, even though the rear forks face each other in parallel, and the axle is aimed directly at the seat tube, the axle is apparently still off in the up/down direction right to left. You can often notice this on bikes if you can't get the tire centered in the seatstays and centered in the chainstays at the same time.

You can't really go by that though as it assumes the seatstays and the chainstays are straight, and how would you know? The position of the axle is what matters.

I had no way to check up.down on the triangle until now, although since the frame was broke one side, and with all the old repairs it doesn't surprise me.





But it also appears that the fork legs are out to the right side (in the pic). That is the next thing I intended to deal with, so I decided to ignore the rear triangle for now, as part of the misalignment may go away when the fork is right.

So, I moved the fork legs left about 3mm and the tire centering in front got worse. WHAT? hmmm....

The next morning after thinking about it, I realized that I must not have got all the twist out of the FRONT triangle. I think it's time for another visit to the machine shop to use that gigantic square, and maybe to mount the fork in the lathe again and see if I can tell anything that way. I'll probably take a day or two off from the frame and fork though. Meanwhile I took the saddle, apart. I had originally intended to leave it alone, but the seat guts in it are bad and I failed in my first attempt to fix them. Last night I threw the upper and lower pan in the vat of Evaporust. It will be interesting to see how much (if anything) is left when they come out.





A quick mockup from yesterday:


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## bloo (Jun 15, 2021)

My evaporust must be worn out. The saddle pan still isn't clean. I took the frame back over to the machine shop yesterday and made more measurements, made a slight bend up/down in the rear triangle, and took a slight twist out at the headtube. The headtube was still off center a bit too. One of Sheldon Brown's pages (I think) says that the end of the headtube the bar is coming out of will move the most. I took that into account and pulled on it, and then took it back over there and remeasured. I also took a tiny bend out of the fork tube that I must have made by accident while straightening the legs (I had it straight once!). The frame may be straight now, I haven't really had time to check it with strings again.

Today's project is the New Departure rear hub. When I got this bike back in the day, it had no brakes. Then I figured out it did have them but it took a couple turns of the crank to get there. Later on, after I started getting a clue about mechanics, I realized that the disc pack was too thin and I added some more discs.

I overhauled this thing a few weeks ago when I trued the wheels. I straightened the axle, turned it around backwards so the worn part wouldn't matter added some discs from @Gordon to make the stack just over the specified 0.75". I replaced the shot reaction spring with one from ebay, and put it together with Redline grease in the bearings and synthetic motor oil on the discs, just like I did on the 41 Schwinn. Interestingly the discs in this one are steel on steel, unlike the 41 which has bronze.

The hub in the 41 works great. This one not so much. Three things I have noticed already even though it has not been put on the bike and ridden yet. 1) It howls with the wheel spinning forward (but not backward) 2) It makes a ratcheting noise when in-between drive and brake. I am not sure if this is the drive clutch serrations rattling on the inside of the hub, or if it might be the ratchet teeth down by the reaction spring. It's one of those. 3) The sprocket does not run quite true. If you adjust the bearings tight you can see it, and if you loosen them it wants to walk around. It seems as though something may be bent but I can't tell what. This time I got a new real ND axle with the factory raised areas at the center from @ABC Services . I don't really see how the trouble could be the old axle, as it looks straight now, but a new one will remove that possibility.


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## Big Moe (Jun 15, 2021)

I thought I have a Huffy like yours. I am right. 😁
I think I bought the one you mentioned before. Except it had all black tires on it. And I changed the bars to ape hangers.


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## bloo (Jun 21, 2021)

Big Moe said:


> I thought I have a Huffy like yours. I am right. 😁
> I think I bought the one you mentioned before. Except it had all black tires on it. And I changed the bars to ape hangers.




Nice bike! I think I identified at least 3 different ones of this model on the CABE, maybe 4, but some of them might be the same bike. If you happen to have this bike out where you can get at it, I might have some questions in a few days soon when I reassemble mine. It was supposed to be a clean, regrease and tire job, but it is sort of dragging out. Thanks for posting!


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## bloo (Jun 21, 2021)

Starry starry night..... paint your pallet gray and blue.....  --Don McLean





Yeah, not much left of that. Here is what it looked like coming out of the evaporust.





What could I possibly do with that? Well I started by tack welding it back together and putting a wire around the edge.





What now? If you guessed "more crappy brazing" you might be on to something. More to come.

Meanwhile, I did some torch shrinking on the seat clamp that wouldn't hold. It seems to be hanging on to this bolt for dear life, and the pinch bolt isn't even tight. I think it is fixed, but I won't know for sure until I can try it on the bike.





The frame still measures straight on the rear triangle after the most recent un-twisting of the front triangle and more straightening of the fork. 27.75mm on one side and 27.99mm on the other. Better than I could hope for really. I'll take it.





But as you can see, the axles still aren't in line. Much better than before though. It looks like the fork is still shifted left (in the picture, right on the bicycle). 





Sighting this, it sure looks like it is the fork's fault, with both legs shifted slightly left, but I can't help but wonder if there could still be a little twist in the front triangle. It wouldn't take much, maybe a degree. I'll have to figure out which it is and make one more little bend.


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## GTs58 (Jun 22, 2021)

Okay, here's what I see. That drop out is angled down more than the other one.


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## bloo (Jun 22, 2021)

You could be right. The rear triangle was out up/down a little when I started. I might not have got it quite straight. It is the front that looks out to me when compared to the seat tube, but the seat tube has some shrunken areas from old repairs, and that could be messing with the sight lines a little bit. I am going to have to get the plumb bobs and levels out again and get really, really creative I think. I wish I had a frame jig. Nothing was square on it when I stared. It's getting close. Tomorrow I am going to turn the forks around backwards and recheck. If that makes no difference, it has to be in the frame.


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## bloo (Jun 23, 2021)

Well, reversing the fork made no difference. A little more frame straightening and:






I think that might even go down the road straight....


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## GTs58 (Jun 23, 2021)

bloo said:


> Well, reversing the fork made no difference. A little more frame straightening and:
> 
> View attachment 1435090
> 
> I think that might even go down the road straight....




Looks better than that last picture!  👍


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## 49autocycledeluxe (Jun 27, 2021)

great post. I like all the frame straightening/measuring ideas.  🙂


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## bloo (Jul 7, 2021)

We have been having crazy hot weather here, 117F one day, 115F the day after that and 100+ for several days after that. Not much is getting done. A couple of days ago though I decided to work on the chainguard. The chainguard was missing entirely, and with the incorrect bent crank that was in the bike one wouldn't fit. Someone had simply broken it off to get it out of the way.





Because they had apparently brazed it in place when they repaired the bottom bracket. They didn't even have it tight against the bottom bracket. Sheesh.





A while back I bought a chainguard from @zedsn .





I was sure it was the right one other than paint. It turns out it is not identical, but it is the right stamping so it should work. It mounts a little differently.

Here is what the original guard should look like, bike is the one @kirk thomas sold back in 2016:





This one has the bracket attached with bolts rather than spot welds, handy because I have a bracket permanently attached to my frame.





Doesn't look too bad....





I put the bottom bracket, back wheel, and chain on to see how it fits. It doesn't, and the fender doesn't fit at all. Why? Apparently because that bracket wasn't tightened down when they brazed it in place.





I bent the bracket back quite a lot and now things are looking better. It clears the fender and everything else, barely.





I am having second thoughts about even putting this on. It is tough to imagine a scenario where it doesn't make a bunch of godawful noise. It never had a guard when I was riding it. I guess I will forge ahead for now.

The next problem is the rear mount. It should have a fork thing on it to go around the axle, and it isn't there. This picture is from an old @37fleetwood post.





As you can see, they vary a little. I am not sure what size bikes these are for, but that one in the middle has the right stripe job. It may even be a 24 but I am not sure.

This is one @S24_BKPR77 had. I wanted to buy it but it was in PR and shipping killed that idea. It is for 24 inch.





The fork looks about the same as the one in the @37fleetwood picture. Now I have to make a little fork like that. It shouldn't be too tough. More to come....


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## bloo (Jul 10, 2021)

Yesterday I tackled the rear hub again.

I had initially overhauled it and added some discs to get the disc pack up to 0.75 inches as it should be. I put in a new reaction spring and straightened the axle. With Redline grease in the bearings and light synthetic oil on the brake discs, it should have worked nicely. Nope, it howled loudly when spinning in the forward direction and the sprocket wobbled as the wheel turned. Also it made a loud ratcheting noise when in coast mode.

When I last worked on it I bought it a new axle just in case, and figure-eight sanded all the discs using sandpaper on a piece of glass. That made the discs quiet, and the braking felt smooth, or at least it did sitting on the truing stand.

It still had that annoying ratcheting sound though. By interchanging parts with another hub I discovered the culprit was the hub shell. It had serrations inside where the forward drive engages, and the other hubs here did not, and the drive clutch would just sit there and rattle on the serrations whenever the wheel coasted. This is what it looks like inside:





Also I discovered that putting the Huffy's parts in another shell seemed to cure the sprocket wobble. The only reasonable explanation for the sprocket wobble at this point is that the bearing races in the shell are not parallel. Both remaining problem's are apparently the shell's fault. I had no 28 hole shells, so I bought a very nice example from @Gordon. It is identical in appearance to the old one on the outside. This is what it looks like inside:





I have to say though, I really did NOT want to relace this wheel. I don't know why. It's not like it is a tough job. When I was test fitting the chain guard and fender I needed to have the chain on, so I decided to try it on the bike. Maybe it is normal. Maybe it is not that noticeable on the bike. Maybe I can just put this nice shell I bought away and do it later. How could the serrations get there unless the factory put them there, right? So I lubed everything up, with extra grease on the drive clutch this time and......

*RRRRRRRAAAAAWWWWWWWHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!*

It was even louder on the bike. It seemed to resonate through the frame and chain.

I went ahead and relaced the wheel. Huffy apparently ignored any conventions about where to put the stem, logo and so on, and laced it cross 3 with no interlacing. After a couple of false starts I was able to lace it the same way Huffy did. Truing the wheel will most likely happen tomorrow.


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## bloo (Jul 17, 2021)

Wheel is relaced and trued. I noticed in the service info in the Schwinn manual here on the CABE that they recommend you check to see if the surface where the first round disc sits is flat on the disc support sleeve, and if not run a 3-tab disc for the first one. Sure enough mine was not flat. It had been running a 3-tab disc out there, so maybe it was due to wear, I don't know. At some point one disc had fallen out of the slots though and worn tabs thin, so I didn't want to run it with a 3-tab disc at that end. I wanted to have the first 3-tab disc as far in as possible, so I ground down the high spots with a dremel. They are the areas in next to the flats, between the flats and the smaller diameter. The first disc sits flat just fine now.





I cleaned everything up again, greased the bearings, oiled the discs, and assembled it in the new shell from Gordon. It's quiet!

Yesterday I made some shims for the bottom bracket cups. The old ones had been spinning in the bottom bracket, so there was significant wear in the tube. The new ones I got from Kirk Thomas, complete with the crank, bearings, etc. out of a similar Huffy fit even looser. 0.008" shim stock is what it took, so that's 0.016" of slop! Wow. Anyhow it's fixed now.


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## bloo (Jul 20, 2021)

More shims! This time for the worn out headtube where the cups had been spinning due to a bent fork.





And now it is time to do something about that missing chainguard bracket. One obvious question, How high should it be? Here is the ex Kirk Thomas huffy again:





And here is aleone's bike:





My guard isn't going to reach back that far, it might be about 1/4" shorter. On the other hand, maybe the girls frame is different. Here is the Thomas bike again with a boys frame. Hard to tell, but it might be hanging back 1/4" like mine is:





The bracket in question, shown here on an "Apache" guard that sold on ebay. Who sold an Apache? Hiawatha? I don't know, but it is definitely another one of these Huffman stampings.





So, with everything in position, make a cardboard template:





Here we go....









That took care of the inside radiuses, everything else can be done with tinsnips, grinder, hammers, etc.

A short while later:





While fitting this, I also worked on the back fender some. When I tried it before the upper stay seemed to want to push the fender way off center. It would center, but the slotted hole had to be all the way up on one side, and all the way down on the other, and it REALLY didn't want to do it. Can you spot the problem here?





Yes, that's right. The curved fender stay is curved more on one side than the other.





Oh well... In for a penny, in for a pound...... The more curved one matches the front fender. While bending the straighter side to match the more curved side I noticed this:





Seriously?! When they brazed the fender stay to the fender they didn't get it perpendicular.





At this point I decided I had to put the fender and the wheel and the chain on and measure from the axle to the fender in several places, and see if there was any way it could line up properly, and if the holes would need to be elongated. Then I discovered that the OTHER stay at the back, which is not a stay by the way, just a random piece of metal, had neither hole in the right place, and there was 3/8" difference between the two. It was contributing more to the misalignment than the stay pictured above.









To be continued....


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## bloo (Jul 21, 2021)

Yeah, this will probably be OK now.





Barely enough metal to keep the loop closed but it worked out ok. It now lines up with a little push.





One remaining unresolved thing is the fact that the adjuster screws on the rear forks don't want to stay straight, they want to cram themselves between the top or bottom of the axle and the fork. One of them had been crammed between the axle and the top of the fork slot for so many years it was sharp like a pencil before I repaired it. These just have a square nut holding them in place, they are not tight in the frame like some other brands of bike that had threaded frames. These are supposed to be sort of loose, but not this loose. I stuck the butt of a drill bit through the holes and determined that most of the excessive slop was on the inside part of the fork. A little dot of silver braze built that right up. The drive side was the worst but I fixed both.





And the filed the dot down with a miniature round file to put the curve back.





It can still move around, but not enough to get stuck between the axle and the fork.


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## bloo (Jul 22, 2021)

I figured I would buy some liver of sulfur to darken up that braze repair up at the top of the seat post. The old repairs down at the bottom bracket blend in pretty good, but after I fixed the cracks adjacent to that old weld/braze repair, it is shiny.

A little googling suggests liver of sulfur wont work on brass. That surprises me. Apparently it works on bronze, but not brass. When making some drawer pulls for an antique toolbox a few months ago I tried all the Internet's favorite methods for darkening brass, like eggs in plastic bags, ammonia, salt and vinegar, etc. etc. None of those work worth sour owl manure. I did manage to take the shiny edge off enough for what I was doing. Apparently for brass you need something with Selenium Dioxide in it.

Now brazing rods might be bronze. I discovered that some people insist on calling them bronze. My brazing rods are part of a big pile I bought when I was still in high school. They sure look like brass to me, and the welding supply I bought them from closed up decades ago so I can't ask.

I ordered some of this stuff:





And tried it on the spot where I brazed the tail of the back fender together.







Oh yeah, that works, so I went ahead and darkened up that crappy brazing at the top of the seat post.





Fogged a little red primer and flat dark brown camouflage paint over it...





And then blended it in with a scotchbrite pad.





For reference, this is what it looked like in the beginning:





So then I silver brazed the bracket onto the guard.





I am not that much of a fan of faux patina but, the guard was covered in some rubbery stuff that looked like mobile home roof paint when I got it, and underneath that was some bright candy blue paint and the wrong stripe job. All that had to come off.





So over the bare metal I fogged 3 different shades of brown, trying to get it to sort of match the frame, and then I scrubbed it down with scotchbrite. The color came pretty close.





And FINALLY assembled most of the bike. This must be the longest winded tear down and regrease job in the history of cycling. There are still a few small issues, but it is getting close.


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## GTs58 (Jul 22, 2021)

Looking good!


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## Pondo (Jul 22, 2021)

That's looking really good.  You've done a hell of a lot of nice work on this one.  It must be really rewarding to be getting your old bike back on the road and in good shape!


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## bloo (Jul 22, 2021)

I'll have to try and ride it at some point but I am 6"3". Its gonna be like a gorilla on a tricycle. 🤣


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