'74 Schwinn Camelback Strandie

[Bike from the Dead]

Well, this past week didn't go like I had hoped. I was hoping to take advantage of the warm weather to get this Schwinn ready to ride by now, but a lot of things happened this week that kept me from getting much done. That said, I did managed to disassemble the bike down to the bare frame on Wednesday, and I picked up my new 22-tooth Sturmey-Archer rear gear from Tom's Bicycles in Tulsa yesterday.

I also learned that the other 44-tooth chainring I got from Ruby had the same problem with the chrome that the other had, so I don't know what's going on there.

It's supposed to rain on-and-off all week this week, but I should have more time to work on the bike now, so maybe I could get this one rolling and get back on my Heavy-Duti as well.

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Made some progress on the Schwinn yesterday.

First, I trimmed off some excess material from the foam handlebar pad.

Next, I cleaned out the inside of the seat tube and head tube with my drill and a wire brush.

I then tested out a few different seat posts. I wanted to use this long seat post, but I could only get it to slide down inside this far before it could go no further. I don't know what it's catching on, as the seat post and seat tube both appear to be straight, and there wasn't anything stuck inside the seat tube either.

I decided to go with a shorter, but still plenty long Schwinn-style seat post. It fits the frame like I want, and with a little steel wool, it shined up pretty well too.

Next, I went over the whole frame with SC Johnson paste wax to help bring out the shine.

I also picked out and cleaned up a Schwinn seat post clamp, which I had to struggle to open wide enough to slide down over the seat tube.

After that, I went about cold-setting the frame to fit a coaster brake hub. Thankfully, that went pretty smoothly.

I got the spacing perfect! The axle nuts are only finger-tightened enough to keep the wheel from falling out of the dropouts, but there's just enough space to comfortably slide that wheel into the dropouts with almost no gaps! I don't think I could do it any better if I tried!

The last thing I worked on was deciding on a crank. I wanted something with some smoother crank arms like an older Schwinn crank, but with plenty of good chrome on both arms. Fortunately, I had what I needed.

I never figured this out, but how do you tell how old a Schwinn crank is?

I doubt this crank is from 1974, but the stamped 74 makes me want to use it on this '74 Schwinn regardless.

 

[Bike from the Dead]

The crank was a bit rusty, but with a brass wire brush, some #0000 steel wool, and a bit of elbow grease and patience, it shined up well enough for my taste!

The weather's going to warm, windy and dry for most of today, so I'm going to try and at least get the headset, bottom bracket, and seat installed on the frame today. It's getting close!

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Sometimes you have to tear down something old to build something new. Case in point, I tore down my '68 Fastback, which I built during the Muscle Bike Build Off last fall, so I could use most of the headset and bottom bracket hardware on this new Camelback. In theory, this would also save me a bunch of time and effort picking out, cleaning up, and greasing up bearings, cups, and other hardware, especially since this bike doesn't have more than maybe 5 miles of riding on it at most.

Since I don't need the frame anymore, I'm selling it to a friend of mine, who's going to build it up as a wild BMX bike.

After a little shine-up, I got the headset and bottom bracket bearing cups installed.

This is new: I only had to ultrasonic clean a since headset bearing this time!

But that almost turned out to be unnecessary, as the Schwinn race on that Fastback had a wider opening than the others I tried to fit on this chrome BMX fork. Alas, it was about half a millimeter too narrow to fit. Oh well, I still had a bearing that'd work for the other crown race.

Unfortunately, my idea to save some time by reusing parts didn't pan out quite like I had hoped. I dug through the archives and found I had the same problem with this top bearing cup on the Fastback I just pulled it from. I might just need to swap out the top bearing cup, and that could solve the problem with the headset.

I moved onto the bottom bracket next, getting the chainring and crank installed, but it wasn't until I had the crank installed just right that I found the chainring wobbling a bit. It miiiiiiiiight be okay, but I'm worried this might cause the chain to come off the gears. How bad is this really? Can I fix this with an adjustable wrench, or do I need to take apart the whole bottom bracket to fix this? (Since I can't post the videos of the issue here, here's a link to the post over on ratrodbikes.com.)

 

[Bike from the Dead]

I tried troubleshooting yesterday's issues this afternoon, but it honestly might not have even been necessary.

First off, I paid attention to how the chainring wobbles, and it only really moves about a millimeter away from the frame at its furthest. I also took the crank and chainring off, and found that the chainring is fine. I even got a fellow bike friend's opinion on it, and he told me there wasn't anything wrong with it.

I did pick out another crank and I began greasing it up, but it may not even be necessary for the same reason that swapping out the headset bearing cups probably wasn't necessary: it could just be that this frame wasn't machined correctly at the headset and bottom bracket, or the bearing cups themselves aren't perfect. These Schwinns were still mass-produced bikes same as everything else, and there were bound to be imperfections. So, I may just have to run it like it is. It's not what I want to do, but I want to get this bike done, so it'll work.

On a side note, my friend who gave me his second opinion on the issue with the chainring, crank and headset just bought that Fastback frame off of me. Here's how he plans to build it:

If I had a set of Motomags, I would've built that frame this way myself! That bike's gone to a good home where it's going to be loved and appreciated even more than when I had it, and for that, I'm glad.

 

[coasterbrakejunkie1969]

I tried troubleshooting yesterday's issues this afternoon, but it honestly might not have even been necessary.

First off, I paid attention to how the chainring wobbles, and it only really moves about a millimeter away from the frame at its furthest. I also took the crank and chainring off, and found that the chainring is fine. I even got a fellow bike friend's opinion on it, and he told me there wasn't anything wrong with it.
View attachment 2376243

I did pick out another crank and I began greasing it up, but it may not even be necessary for the same reason that swapping out the headset bearing cups probably wasn't necessary: it could just be that this frame wasn't machined correctly at the headset and bottom bracket, or the bearing cups themselves aren't perfect. These Schwinns were still mass-produced bikes same as everything else, and there were bound to be imperfections. So, I may just have to run it like it is. It's not what I want to do, but I want to get this bike done, so it'll work.
View attachment 2376244

View attachment 2376245

On a side note, my friend who gave me his second opinion on the issue with the chainring, crank and headset just bought that Fastback frame off of me. Here's how he plans to build it:
View attachment 2376246

If I had a set of Motomags, I would've built that frame this way myself! That bike's gone to a good home where it's going to be loved and appreciated even more than when I had it, and for that, I'm glad.

I would have loved to get my hands on this frame.

 

[coasterbrakejunkie1969]

Made some progress on the Schwinn yesterday.

First, I trimmed off some excess material from the foam handlebar pad.
View attachment 2375473

View attachment 2375474

Next, I cleaned out the inside of the seat tube and head tube with my drill and a wire brush.
View attachment 2375475

I then tested out a few different seat posts. I wanted to use this long seat post, but I could only get it to slide down inside this far before it could go no further. I don't know what it's catching on, as the seat post and seat tube both appear to be straight, and there wasn't anything stuck inside the seat tube either.
View attachment 2375476

View attachment 2375477

I decided to go with a shorter, but still plenty long Schwinn-style seat post. It fits the frame like I want, and with a little steel wool, it shined up pretty well too.
View attachment 2375478

Next, I went over the whole frame with SC Johnson paste wax to help bring out the shine.
View attachment 2375479

View attachment 2375480

I also picked out and cleaned up a Schwinn seat post clamp, which I had to struggle to open wide enough to slide down over the seat tube.
View attachment 2375481

After that, I went about cold-setting the frame to fit a coaster brake hub. Thankfully, that went pretty smoothly.
View attachment 2375482

View attachment 2375483

View attachment 2375484

View attachment 2375485

View attachment 2375486

View attachment 2375487

I got the spacing perfect! The axle nuts are only finger-tightened enough to keep the wheel from falling out of the dropouts, but there's just enough space to comfortably slide that wheel into the dropouts with almost no gaps! I don't think I could do it any better if I tried!
View attachment 2375488

The last thing I worked on was deciding on a crank. I wanted something with some smoother crank arms like an older Schwinn crank, but with plenty of good chrome on both arms. Fortunately, I had what I needed.
View attachment 2375489

I never figured this out, but how do you tell how old a Schwinn crank is?
View attachment 2375490

View attachment 2375491

I doubt this crank is from 1974, but the stamped 74 makes me want to use it on this '74 Schwinn regardless.
View attachment 2375492

this crank was cast July 4 1979

 

[Bike from the Dead]

I would have loved to get my hands on this frame.

If you're able to go to any bicycle swap meets, you might be able to find some Fastback frames there. That's how I got that one.

this crank was cast July 4 1979

Awesome, thanks!

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Man, this past week was crazy. Between celebrating birthdays with family, fighting my ADHD just to get the house cleaned, and all this blooming pollen kicking my butt so hard I developed a fever with a massive constant coughing fit, I just could not get anything done on my bikes this past week! Heck, I'm still dealing with seasonal allergies, but it's been reduced to just a stuffy nose and the occasional cough now.

I did finish another project at the start of this month though! I've been working with @BartRidesEternal for a while on a custom logo and head badge for his bike-building business, and we just finalized the designs and wrapped up the job on the 7th! It was fun collaborating with Bart on these designs, and it was nice to brush up on my graphic design and typography skills to bring his ideas to life. This was my first official logo design I've ever done for a client, and I'm very happy with how it turned out! I hadn't designed custom fonts since I was in college, so it was fun figuring out how to give BATT CYCLES a clean, uniform, gothic-inspired font. It was a bit of a challenge at times, either due to some issues with Adobe Illustrator CS6, or due to some decisions I made early on in the project that would come back to bite me when I was nearing the finish line, but I learned how to work around those problems and avoid them in the future. Each one of these illustration and graphic design jobs is a learning experience, and man did I learn quite a bit working on this logo and head badge! I'm glad I got the chance to work with Bart on this job, and I look forward to working with him again in the future!

With that said, I've got an update on the Camelback strandie: I got it riding yesterday!

I finally managed to motivate myself to go out to the garage and finish what I started. I wasn't going to get caught up on making the bike perfect, as long as I could make it functional. Like David Freiburger says, "don't get it right, just get it running." I can worry about making this bike look "right" later.

I started off with the bottom bracket, by testing out the other crank I had mocked up on the bike before. There wasn't any difference in the way the crank or chainring spun compared to the other crank, so I decided to just leave it and install it as-is. I then installed the handlebars, seat and pedals.

Next, I looked at the wheel hubs. My friend Allan, who I got the wheels from, had clearly rebuilt the hubs and packed them with grease (though not the Park Tool stuff I'm used to.) After a quick assessment, I found that the front wheel was good as-is, but the rear wheel hub was clearly modified to be powered by an engine, so a number of internal parts were missing that I needed to replace.

This was all that was inside the coaster brake hub. Also note how the brake arm was turned into a washer.

Fortunately, I had some coaster brake hub parts already loose that I could use to make one complete hub!

Now, I could have skipped ultrasonic-cleaning the bearings and other parts I pulled out of the hub and used them as-was, but I didn't know how 2 different kinds of grease would behave when combined in the same hub. Still, did I pick one heck of a day to do this! We had a cold front come blowing through yesterday afternoon, and by the time I used the garden hose to rinse off everything, the water was freezing cold and the wind was blowing fiercely!

Fortunately, all the parts turned out just fine, and after a little mockup just to refresh myself on how this all went together, I greased up the parts, reassembled the coaster brake, threw on a chain, and tested it out. Success!

I couldn't find a correct Schwinn kickstand I could use on this bike, but my friend Shawn gave me the kickstand he had on the Mongoose Dirt Jumper he got from me, since he doesn't use kickstands on his bikes. Fortunately, it bolted right up!

I wasn't able to get the best photos of the Camelback yesterday afternoon, but I did snap a few pics of it out in the driveway after a very short test-ride in the cul-de-sac. The wind was just too strong to overcome, and the temperature was already nearing 40 degrees by this time. Fortunately, the cold is only supposed to last a couple days, so I'll be able to give this bike a proper test ride soon. I'll also be looking around for some places to shoot the finished photos of this bike.

 

[AndyA]

Fortunately, all the parts turned out just fine, and after a little mockup just to refresh myself on how this all went together, I greased up the parts, reassembled the coaster brake, threw on a chain, and tested it out. Success!

Ah, sweet success! We all need some of that. That bike is lookin' good. Have fun!