1947 Luxury Liner

[hawkster19]

Just sharing some images of my latest rehab which I've determined to be a 1947 thanks to all the fantastic threads here on The CABE. I've had this bike for several years and won't detail all the reasons I put off working on it but thought some of you may enjoy the images of the before and after. I love taking a useless, crunchy bike, removing the grime and loose rust, preserving it's patina with some linseed oil, then greasing and reassembling it to ride as well as it did at its inception. This thing just gliiddeessss along. I'm quite smitten. I also found the history of the Luxury Liner and Brooks Stevens an amazing read while researching here and on the internet!

 

[hawkster19]

BTW, the serial number is A70131 with a CW running the opposite way on the bottom bracket.

 

[rusty.kirkpatrick]

Another beauty @hawkster19, killer patina on this one.

 

[Kstone]

G O R G E O U S

 

[jimbo53]

Looks GREAT!

 

[OSCAR...]

That's @ Beautiful bike good job Amigo.....

 

[morton]

Nice job.....only thing left to do is run those tires through some grungy oily water puddles and let sit until dry and you got instant street cred!

 

[Mr. Monkeyarms]

Great looking bike! I'm sure the results are worth the wait to preserve. Very nice!

 

[Boris]

Conscious decision not to use the original wheels. Were they toast?

 

[hawkster19]

Conscious decision not to use the original wheels. Were they toast?

About that.....well, since you asked......they are quite roached. But hear me out. The spokes have undergone that type of rusting where the middles of the spokes have thinned and about 4 had snapped off. The gentleman Caber I purchased this project from had included a set of CWC rims that had been sandblasted. That was my biggest cause of consternation and foot dragging on this project and why it took me so long to finally dig in and do something with it. I couldn't decide if I wanted to get those rims chromed. If I wanted to get them painted. But if I did either of those then they would look seriously out-of-place with the patina of the bike. I contemplated and contemplated, obviously. I even thought of removing the hubs and just lacing them into the unfinished CWC rims. I finally decided to put this semi-period correct set of what I believe to be Monark wheels on it until I can find a proper set of patina'd CWC wheels for my bike. I wanted to ride it after all these years.

Now, all that long explanation aside, after I removed the original wheel set, they didn't seem quite as compromised as I had thought. I replaced the snapped spokes on the front rim which trued the wheel almost to a perfect rotation and the rear wheel still remarkably remains almost true. Sooo, now I'm thinking of cleaning those wheels a bit and then making another decision. I might even see what they would look like with those WW red tires. I am a bit worried about those rusted spokes as I would like this to be a frequent rider.

Aren't you sorry you asked? But thanks for the fun question.