# KHS Winner



## parkrndl (Aug 27, 2018)

A little reluctant to post this one, because it's a cheap entry-level 10-speed from the early '80s... but it was special to me, so a little background first.

My dad was an accountant. He used to do taxes on the side for small businesses.  One of his customers was a surf shop near New York City that also sold bicycles.  On one of his trips to the shop, in maybe 1981 or 1982, he took me along.  I got to choose my first ten-speed on that trip.  Over a period of a few years, from maybe 7th grade till the time I got my drivers' license, I rode that bike ALL OVER Long Island with a few friends who also skipped the BMX craze and got into ten-speeds.  We read Bicycling Magazine, scanned the pages of Bike Nashbar, bought Bellwether and Rhode Gear and Cannondale bags, put high-performance tires on our low-performance bikes.  I also "upgraded" other stuff; I remember I took off the suicide brake levers and hacksawed the mounts so that brake hoods would fit, and I converted the brakes to center-pulls I found on someone's junked bike.  Pretty sure I put on aluminum handlebars and stem, and I'm sure I replaced the seat at some point.  I think I even converted the stem shifters to clamp-on down tube shifters.  Never got around to upgrading from the cottered crank, though. 

Then I got a nicer bike with a double-butted frame and aluminum rims and Suntour BlueLine components right around the time I got my drivers' license... so we all know how much that nice new bike got ridden.

Somehow, though, I have no recollection whatsoever of what happened to that first old ten-speed that I logged so many miles on and loved so much.  No pictures of it that I can find, either.  I've done a couple of Web searches for the make and model, but they come up pretty much empty, and none of my current bike-hobby friends have ever heard of it.

Imagine my surprise, then, when this past weekend at a VW and bike show/swap meet, I found the exact same make, model, size, and color in a row of crusty bikes that I'm sure the vendor had rescued from the dump.  I HAD to bring it home.












































The freewheel is pretty jammed up at the moment.  It'll turn with some force applied, but it's not rideable.  Front brakes are just for show right now too.  I want to clean it up and make it rideable first, and eventually go back through all my old upgrades... remove the extra brake levers, add centerpulls, down tube shifters, foam handlebar sleeves (oh, did I mention them before?), maybe even finally upgrade to that cotterless crank...

For now, though, I'm just looking at it in the basement and reminiscing.


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## HARPO (Aug 27, 2018)

Any chance it actually IS your old bike? Stranger things have happened...


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## parkrndl (Aug 27, 2018)

HARPO said:


> Any chance it actually IS your old bike? Stranger things have happened...




I actually thought that... but none of the "upgrades" (lol) are on this bike.  Also, on my old one, I actually painted my name on the top tube just under the seat in gold Testors model paint to match the trim in the frame lugs.  You better believe that's the first thing I looked for when I saw this one.  But realistically, I can't imagine how my old bike would have traveled from Long Island to western Maryland anyway...

oh, and look what i found after a few minutes of digging through the boneyard in the basement here.  I knew there was a reason I was keeping this crusty old stuff...


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## kccomet (Aug 27, 2018)

cool story....it's stories like this that I still like about the bike hobby. not the 15000 dollar bike or who has the best or biggest collection


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## juvela (Aug 28, 2018)

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Thanks very much for sharing your story and the bicycle.  

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Minor note -

Found it interesting how poorly the zinc plating on the bicycle's rear mech held up against corrosion while the chrome plating on the chainset and headset faired a good deal better.

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Is the bound up gear block a Shimano or is it a DNB?  If the latter it might be better to replace than repair.

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## parkrndl (Aug 29, 2018)

juvela said:


> -----
> 
> Thanks very much for sharing your story and the bicycle.
> 
> ...




Yeah, about the plating... I've been spending a lot of time lately fixing up '60s and '70s Schwinns, and it's VERY obvious on this bike that some of the plating has not held up well compared to them.  I don't know how these bars and stem will clean up, but I'm not real hopeful looking at them compared to, say, the Collegiate I did a few weeks ago.  Where Schwinn stuff gets a uniform light coating of surface rust that will mostly come off with some elbow grease, this has a few localized spots on the bars and stem and rims where the chrome is just GONE.  We'll see once I get started working on it.

Oh, and I don't plan on spending a lot of time fighting with the freewheel cluster.  If it doesn't loosen up easily, I have access to a boneyard or two where I think I can find a replacement.


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## fattyre (Aug 29, 2018)

Work that free wheel backwards with a chain whip. No big loss if you crack somthing. Freewheels are pretty forgiving. I’d bet it won’t take much to get it working


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