1942 Columbia Sports Tourist Model VG295

[TequilaMockingbird]

I have Columbia "Lightweight" road bike S/N G49433 with a J3 and small, lightly struck 4 on the underside of the bottom bracket. Thanks to @Mercian , I now know that means the frame was marked in March and assembled in April or May of 1942. So, sometime around now it turns 80 years old. I think it's a Model VG295, Sports Tourist, based on a 1942 Columbia catalog I found on-line and remnants of a "Sports Tourist" decal I found under some house paint. It was my father's bike and he bought it new with ration coupons in the summer of '42 at a bike shop in Washington, D.C. when it got too hard to buy gasoline for his '36 Pontiac.

I completed a 2-year "restoration" of it a few months ago and decided I'd like to document it on The CABE for anyone who's interested in such things. The way I'd like to approach this is to post from time to time progressing chronologically through the "restoration" describing what I did at each stage in the process and interspersing some of my recollections of the bike's history which begin when it was about 25 years old in the late 1960's.

For most of the 1990's it had been lying on its side under the porch right where my father had left it after his last ride. His house was less than a mile from the Atlantic and the salt air had taken its toll. I took it home about 20 years ago and it sat in my basement until the kids grew up and moved away. In late 2021, I started work by dripping some Liquid Wrench around the seat post every Monday morning before going to work. I did that for several months. Meantime, I occupied myself taking off the wheels, the handlebars, front fork and the chain. At no time did I ever have the bike totally disassembled. I was always taking something off, cleaning it up, repairing and reassembling it into a subassembly. If it required painting, I would paint it. Once finished, I would wrap it in brown paper, label it and put it in a box. In the end, I hoped to just unwrap each part or assembly, as if new, and reassemble the bike all at once. That's pretty much the way it happened.

The first photo I'll post shows the "restored" bike from a distance. More to come...

 

[SirMike1983]

I'm interested in seeing the project. I love old American-made utility bikes.

 

[mre straightbar]

Lightweights rock! wish I could find taller ones though

 

[Mercian]

Hi @TequilaMockingbird

To confirm, yes, the model is VG295, Sports Tourist.

I look forward to the rest of this thread. (-:

Best Regards,

Adrian

 

[TequilaMockingbird]

Hi @TequilaMockingbird

To confirm, yes, the model is VG295, Sports Tourist.

I look forward to the rest of this thread. (-:

Best Regards,

Adrian

Thanks, Adrian. The serial number information you have compiled has been very interesting and I found it fascinating that the serial number indicates a date of manufacture that matches when my father told me he bought the bicycle.

 

[Miq]

Wartime lightweights are cool! Nice to see it staying in the family. Looking forward to more pics @TequilaMockingbird

 

[TequilaMockingbird]

Installment #2: After my father taught me how to ride a bike, long about 1968 or so, he started riding again to keep me company. This prompted him to embark on a "refresh" of the Columbia which involved cleaning and repacking the front wheel hub, headset and bottom bracket with some crusty old orange grease from a blue and orange can (probably "Allstate Premium Quality Lubricant") he found in the back of the garage. I don't recall him touching the rear hub, but may have - more about this later when I discuss rebuilding the New Departure Model D. He replaced the handlebars with a Wald aftermarket unit and the most comfortable aftermarket hand grips I've ever encountered - still soft 50 years later. The saddle, which I believe was a Mesinger with a front coil covered with a rotting black-painted or impregnated canvas, he covered with a red vinyl cover held on by an elasticized gather. Tires and tubes were replaced with brand-new Carlisle 26 x 1.375 tires (ISO 599 in modern sizing) and a couple of tubes he picked up at the Western Auto. He finished-up with a desultorily applied coat of brushed-on Rustoleum barn red paint to all the originally black parts and some aluminum paint on all the chrome-plated parts (handlebar, seat stems and crank.) This was the bike I knew and the one he rode with me on our early Saturday morning bike rides around our Northwest Washington, D. C. neighborhood, on the C&O canal towpath and Haines Point. My bike at the time was a nondescript 16-incher he picked up at the Goodwill Industries store downtown. Christmas 1971, my parents upgraded me to a brand-new, red Schwinn Typhoon 20-incher, not a Ross, not a Murray, not a Huffy. Why a Schwinn? Well, because my parents loved me, of course.

Back to the present. The old Columbia is lying around in big pieces in the basement and the seat post has been soaking in Liquid Wrench for several months. I clamp a Vise-Grip tightly around the stem and tap lightly with a dead-blow hammer, then with increasing force until I use a 4-lb sledge and the Vise-Grips fly off. Time to make a tool. I take a couple short blocks of 2 X 4, clamp them together, and drill a 3/4-inch hole between them making a wooden clamp that looks something like this:

They're held together with a couple of carriage bolts. If I were to do this again, I'd cut a V-shaped notch in both, rather than drilling out a cylinder. The V notch would increase the point force and friction. Banging on this clamp doesn't work, so I consider rigging up a frame through the bottom bracket to push against as I've seen others do. However, this frame appears to be bronze-brazed together, and I'm worried I'll push the downtube off the bottom bracket before the seat post starts to move. So I make another clamp like the above for the downtube and raid our car trunks for a couple of screw jacks. Duct taping the jacks to the outboard ends of the bottom clamp and pushing up on the seat post clamp (while giving the seat post and downtube a couple of whacks with the dead-blow) does the trick and the seat post comes out. I order-up a 7/8-Inch wire brush and clean up the inside of the downtube as best possible and drip some 3-in-1 down the tube.

Next, I put some paint stripper on the frame and watch as I start to see the decal remnants my father had painted over start to emerge. I take as many pictures as I can to document decal position.

Gold "Sports Tourist" decal (barely visible)

Downtube Decal

Remnant of the gold pinstriping under the head badge.

Next: Refurbishing the steel rims and re spoking the front wheel.

 

[TequilaMockingbird]

Installment #3: I took the best pictures of the wheels I could to document the spoke lacing. The spokes were rusted into the nipples and I had to cut most of them to free them from the rims and the hubs. Fortunately with enough Liquid Wrench and care, I was able to remove one spoke each from the front and rear wheels. To my surprise, they were exactly the same size despite the vastly different hub diameters. The rims were thoroughly rusted, but there seemed to be fairly good wall thickness remaining around the holes, so I felt confident new nipples would not pull through. Wanting to save as much of the original fabric of the bike as possible, I sent the rims out to be grit-blasted and powder coated. They came back with the outside of the rims looking brand new with a little pitting evident here and there under the powder coat inside. Little did I know at this stage that repairing these rims would commit me to new old stock (NOS) 26 X 1.375 (ISO 599) tires. I repainted the front hub, watched a YouTube video and laced the rim in a 3-cross pattern, which seemed to work. The ends of the new spokes were not poking out of the nipples, anyway. The pictures I'd taken of the wheels before removing the spokes were useless to determine the lacing pattern - I found it impossible to discern the far side of the wheel from the near side and which spoke was over or under the other. I cleaned the bearings and inspected the cups and cones in the front hub and axle. All looked good, so I greased everything up with some Red 'N Tacky and put it back together.

Next: Rebuilding the dreaded New Departure Model D coaster brake.

 

[Krakatoa]

Lacing pattern is supposed to be cross four. Also there's the issue of where to start so that the valve stem hole is not crossed by any spokes. If you drill down in the paper archive here I believe there are some Schwinn service bulletins that you can print out on how to lace a wheel that I found that were very helpful.

 

[TequilaMockingbird]

Lacing pattern is supposed to be cross four. Also there's the issue of where to start so that the valve stem hole is not crossed by any spokes. If you drill down in the paper archive here I believe there are some Schwinn service bulletins that you can print out on how to lace a wheel that I found that were very helpful.

Thank you, Krakatoa. If I recall correctly, the front was 3-cross and the rear was 4-cross to account for the larger diameter rear hub as front and rear spokes are the same length. I screwed up the rear wheel lacing and am off one spoke so the stem ended up crossed by a spoke, but it doesn’t interfere with the stem. I will fix it before I take it in to get the wheels professionally trued. The front came out right on the first try.