all riders
Finally riding a big boys bike
This is a very recent find and a bit of a puzzle for me. As you can see this bike has the wrong color tank on it. But it is the right year(1960 bug eyes with metal lids) and it is a difficult tank to find. The bike itself is in really nice survivor shape.
Do you: mask off the white portion of the tank and paint the rest black with appropriate patina? Or, pass the tank onto someone with the red version who has been looking a long time thus preserving the original paint on the tank.
Like I said, the bike itself is quite nice with both correct racks and in general pretty darned
original, but without the tank it's kind of just another middleweight cantilever.
Second dilemma. This bike has two feature that are among my least favorite on heavy-middleweight bikes--wire racks, and cables(no offense to anyone, just my preferences), I could remove the racks, rear wheel, and shifter and store them to go back someday. again tough thing to do to a bike that has held onto its general showroom appearance.
Ultimately, I think I'll let it be someone else's decision( by passing this bike along),not because I can't make the call but because the bike doesn't matter to enough. Its cool(probably one of the better middleweights) but not really my thing.
What would you do?
Do you: mask off the white portion of the tank and paint the rest black with appropriate patina? Or, pass the tank onto someone with the red version who has been looking a long time thus preserving the original paint on the tank.
Like I said, the bike itself is quite nice with both correct racks and in general pretty darned
original, but without the tank it's kind of just another middleweight cantilever.
Second dilemma. This bike has two feature that are among my least favorite on heavy-middleweight bikes--wire racks, and cables(no offense to anyone, just my preferences), I could remove the racks, rear wheel, and shifter and store them to go back someday. again tough thing to do to a bike that has held onto its general showroom appearance.
Ultimately, I think I'll let it be someone else's decision( by passing this bike along),not because I can't make the call but because the bike doesn't matter to enough. Its cool(probably one of the better middleweights) but not really my thing.
What would you do?
