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Fresh Find: 1980 Cook Brothers Three Bar Cruiser

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Thanks!
It was a good mail day today. The rear hub was a Christmas gift from a good friend last year and the front hub took 7 months of very frequently hitting refresh on eBay and BMXmuseum classifieds, haha! The ad was up for three minutes when I had to snipe it with that trigger finger! It came via a complete 24” wheelset but I finally got one and thankfully it’s a third-gen like my rear hub. Bummer they’re not period correct for my ‘80 but oh well.

I plan to unlace the Sunshine hubs and re-lace th to the spokes and rims that came with the bike.

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Hey man bike looks great think about it this way not everyone bought all there parts at the same time “the hubs could have been put on a few years after the frame set was bought “atleast the hubs aren’t earlier then the frame set
 
Hey man bike looks great think about it this way not everyone bought all there parts at the same time “the hubs could have been put on a few years after the frame set was bought “atleast the hubs aren’t earlier then the frame set
Yeah, good point. I'm a stickler for factory-correct and period-correct but these were pretty much all sold as framesets, not completes. So there's not really a "correct" build to follow. This is good and bad but sometimes drives me crazy overthinking it, haha!
 
Nice work on a killer bike. You can probably hot rod that Bendix coaster by replacing the caged balls on the drive side with loose balls and adding a few extra as well. I have done it to many Shimano cb-e110 hubs which I believe was cloned from the Bendix.
 
More progress. Tore down the original rear wheel to lace the Cook rear hub and installed new SR-8 bearings in the front hub. I’m hoping the spokes are the right length to re-use.

I was going to convert the front hub to a solid axle but the ID/OD of the bearing/hub shell is actually different from the solid axle rear. Bummer, few things look worse than a QR axle on a vintage cruiser. Oh well. Was advised against improvising a different bearing/axle by the Cook Bros. Godfather so here it is.

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When you get it in your final stage you should bring it back by the old owner and get another picture together with it. Just a thought it was part of her life for a long time I’m sure she would love to see it all fixed up continuing it’s journey
 
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