Miami Cycle and Manufacturing Co. - Flying Merkel

[rebirthbikes]

I found this on a Craigslist ad about 40 miles south of where it was manufactured in Middletown, Ohio. I met a scrapper at a casino at 8:45 pm and shortly there after I loaded it into my car and brought her home. The provenance as I was told goes like this... This is a one owner bicycle and the owner died about fifteen years ago and his estate was in litigation. The estate finally settled and the new owners decided to level the house and start fresh and that is where the scrapper found it. According to the estate owners this bicycle was the deceased owners pride and joy. His parents owned a dairy, and possibly other businesses, in the Northwood/Cincinnati area. Apparently, sometime in his forties or fifties he painted the bike black and gave it to his grandson to use when he visited. After the Merkel owner passed away his bike sat inside the house untouched for the last fifteen years behind some palettes in the basement. He showed the newly found bicycle to the new owners and they gave him the bicycle as a gift. He didn’t know what to do with it, but he saw the wooden rims and decided to sell it. He told me it was listed for four months on Craigslist and I was the first one to contact him. I'm still attempting to track down the original owners name or his family businesses. Hopefully something more will come of that.

Shortly after I began, I decided that because of what the bicycle was, because it was rare, and because of who manufactured it, I was going to document the process. This is my first attempt at this and so this is where I'll start:

I did a quick test with some 0000 steel wool in the parking lot and I saw a whole lot of orange and part of "M" on the downtube. Of course the part I picked to test the black paint was directly above the transfer of the name. I stopped instantly and loaded the bike up for the trip home. Once I got it home, I decided to disassemble it and get all the black off of the bicycle.

The first photos are from the Craigslist ad and then the day after I got her home.

The next day after I got her home and began disassembling her for cleaning and maintenance I decided that because it's a Miami Cycle bicycle and they manufactured most of their own parts and components and because there are so many differences in so many of their offerings, I decided to document all the little oddities or manufacturing techniques I came across. (my wife grabbed some photos of me working on it too... so I put them in, because I realize that I don't know what a lot of you actually look like... so this is me)

These last few photos are to show how thick the paint is in spots. After I dug into the project and I had it disassembled I soon realized that parts of the bike were painted black first and then white and the bike was painted at one time and full assembled. There are a lot of thick drips of dried paint underneath of all the horizontal bars and the fork and rear of the bicycle are going to be problem areas. Both areas have quite a bit of nicks and scrapes in the original paint that were painted black. You can sort of see cracks in the paint, or dimpling in the paint and it is all covered by thick black paint. In the second to last photo above are the remnants of the head tube transfer. You can see some of the dimpling and the thickness of the paint I was referring to. The head tube had taken some hits in its early life.

It's going to be slow and steady to win this race and there's quite a few transfers I want to preserve. The down tube transfer was uncovered on the night I got her and more later the first day at home. I am pretty sure I accidentally rubbed some of that downtube transfer off in the parking lot the night I got her. At this point, I realized that I need some advice. The 0000 steel wool and wd40 was only going to get me so far and I wanted to preserve as much of the transfers as I possibly could. I reached out to someone who I knew had stripped a bicycle of thick house paint and saved transfers and foil paint. Shawn(freqman1), made a phenomenal recommendation/technique. I tested his recommendation/technique on another bike that I have which is also covered in black paint. It worked really well, but you have to work quickly... too much time and you lose the original paint.

If you're following along. Work fast, be patient, work small, and focus on the minutiae.

This is going to be a project.

 

[ssum2]

Your getting a nice collection chief and a Miami Merkel going to be busy

 

[rebirthbikes]

Thank you, Skip. I really appreciate it, I’ve been fortunate to Forrest Gump my way into a few old ones that’s for certain.

 

[rebirthbikes]

Knowing the fork was going to be a problem area I wanted to tackle it right away. I still don't know the exact model or year of this machine, but if I had to guess I would say between 1913-1915. There's a few reasons for this, and I still don't have my hands on the 1915 catalog yet, but I'm thinking this was The Flying Merkel Double Bar Standard. The fork is a simple crown fork, but upon inspection I believe that the crown fork had nickel shoulders and nickel ends that came to a "v". The 406 Roadster on display in the National Motorcycle Museum has this same fork and the nickel is exposed at the shoulders and the ends. Based on the rusting of the fork on the Merkel I found I suspect that the two forks are similar and that the crown fork on this Merkel and that Merkel would have matched. Once I realized that the paint was sitting atop a nickel plated fork it altered my approach to removing the black paint. Patience is going to be needed.

I soaked the tape for a while and I was hopeful that it would come off without removing any paint, but it took off some paint with it when I removed it, but luckily it was only black paint and there was some orange underneath that tape. If you look closely you can see where the exposed nickel shoulders and ends would have been... they aged differently than the rest of the fork. Here I slowed down and went with terry cloth rags, old canvas drop cloth rags, and some old silk unmentionables. I reasoned these three types of rags gave me some variety in the coarse nature of the thread. On the heavier areas of black overspray I used old canvas drop cloth to get through the thick paint. Once I had those worn down somewhat I switched over to the terry cloth rags, and after that was done cutting through and I could see some orange, I switched to the old silk unmentionables. Made some real progress with this technique.

After I got to this point I knew I was going to have to get granular with it. I dugout the q-tips, toothpicks, and an exacto blade. The exacto is for the last resort use and for the chunks of white paint underneath or over top the black paint. The white paint is a bigger pain in the butt than the black paint. I also grabbed out some 0000 steel wool and some brass wool for the rust cleanup on the exposed nickel parts. What I noticed though, to help support my previous statement, about how the fork may have looked, was that there was no orange overspray on the fork above the shoulders. None at all. After about an hour or two total, the fork was clean of any black or white overspray. There wasn't much orange left, but I knew that going in... I knew it was going to be sparse, but from what I managed to save there are some lovely pinstripes and details. I'm pretty happy with it truth be told.

The last few photos really showcase where the rusted nickel must have met a painted line. I was genuinely surprised that I was able to save some of the red primer too. I was being gentle, but dang, I didn't expect to see any primer after I washed off the forks.

While I was cleaning and uncovering, I located two manufactured holes just above the inside of where the axle mount is, AND, I found two others a few inches down from the shoulders, both of those are located on the interior of the fork legs too. Maybe the upper holes were for a mudguard/fender attachment? I'm still not sure. But, I'll include those photos right after this post. That's it for today. Fork, done!

 

[rebirthbikes]

The upper holes and the lower holes on the fork blade interiors.

 

[Freqman1]

Kudos to you for the patience you display resurrecting this machine! Can't wait to see the finished bike.

 

[rebirthbikes]

Thank you, sir, I sincerely appreciate that. Thank you for your help and guidance, it has been an immense help. This project is a ton of fun and I've loved digging into the design aspects, the quality of the manufacturing, and seeing the practical choices that were made. I've been trying to document some of those details along the way too.

 

[ssum2]

Lower holes for spreading fork they had tool that would spread forks l use belt and trailer hitch to spread forks for wheel axle

 

[OC_Rolling_Art]

Very cool start to an exciting project, and, the forks are straight!

 

[rebirthbikes]

Took a day off to run a bike to my good buddy in KC. Back to posting today. I really love the Miami frame construction. The thought and detail that went into reinforcing the joints and tubes. I thought I'd throw these in for all the folks like me that love to geek out on this stuff.

First up is the head tube and the Hercules reinforcement (Heracles for the greek mythology nerds like myself)

While I was digging into the frame construction I decided to do a full overhaul and remove the previous grease and repack the bearings of the headtube and the bottom bracket. The original grease was pretty nasty, but I was surprised at how well it was still holding... it was soft and malleable still. Oddly enough, I half expected to find Miami markings on the bearing cups or the bearings themselves and there was nothing to find at all. They were clear of any branding.

One of these cups is drive side and one is not...

All clean.

Here is the interior of the bottom bracket from the non-drive side. The second photo is the bottom bracket photographed looking down the seat tube into the bottom bracket to show the lower frame support.

If I'm being honest, I was hopeful to find a sales receipt shoved into one of those tubes. I've found receipts and even money in the tubes of bicycles and handlebars over the years and I would love to be able to date this old gal. While I was at this stage I decided to dig into the fork hardware and the chainring and crank too. The rims and BB assembly are all covered in the white paint. I'm not sure why, but the white paint has been the hardest to remove and the technique I am using for the black paint isn't working with the white paint. Being a uniquely manufactured crank arm I didn't want to damage it in anyway, so again, it was time to dig in and get granular. I grabbed the exacto blades and q-tips again. I also used a brass brush I've had for years... it's pretty well worn and abused, but it really does the trick in situations like this.
Below is how she started.

How she looks now. I could have really dug in here, but I really want this bicycle to free of any paint that wasn't originally present from the manufacturer, AND, I want the bicycle to retain its age and patina. A complete clean up would make it look too nice and too shiny for this bicycle. So, I took it down to the layer below the overspray and then I wiped everything down with one of the rags from the project.

After these were cleaned I decided to move to the head tube bearings and get those cleaned up and ready to be installed again.

I also decided to see what I could do with the broken stem and the handle bars. The previous owner tried to twist the stem out without having full disengaged the wedge. I feel like we've all been there once, normally with a torrington stem. On the stem I found a uniquely machined wedge... It's my first time encountering a stem and wedge like this. The bars should be Miami made, but again, I found no markings except a small hole in the end of one side, similar to torrington bars; however, unlike the torrington bars I've encountered, the hole was to the side of the bars. Unfortunately, I didn't get any before photos of the stem and bars, but this is them after the black paint was removed and they were wiped down with an oily rag.

I mean, c'mon, look at the craft that went into the stem wedge, a piece never to be seen after installed.
And here it sits old, complete, and beautiful in its own way.

I decided to wait to repacked the Miami made front hub and the rear hub, but I cleaned up the Diamond chain a bit too. Revealed a really lovely patina on this old Diamond chain. Hopefully, these patinas will match the bike perfectly when it's done.