The Old West (Late 1950s/Early 1960s AMF-built Western Flyer Sonic Flyer)

[Bike from the Dead]

I didn't get much sleep at all last night, and as a result, I had almost zero energy for the whole day. Figures that I'd come down with a bad case of insomnia the night before I planned to throw this bike together. Thankfully, I did make a little progress this evening. I spent a few hours manually cleaning up the frame with some rubbing compound, and I was surprised by how much of a difference it made! My phone camera didn't do the best job capturing it, but a lot of the duller parts of the frame managed to shine right up!

As nice as the frame looks now, I think there's still a lot of potential left in the old paint. I was going to try and get this bike reassembled before this weekend, but having given it some thought, I think I'll slow down and take some extra time cleaning up the paint on this bike before I reassemble it. I'm thinking about getting a couple attachments for my drill that might allow me to shine up this bike even better than I can by hand. Better to do this part right once before reassembly than to do it over another time.

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Question for the more experienced bicycle buffers: is there a more effective way to buff out the paint on this old bike than using rubbing compound and a bunch of old socks to cut through the oxidization? I thought about getting some drill-mounted mini buffing wheels and cones, but I'm not sure if I'll get any better results than what I already have, or if what I'm doing now, combined with the condition of the paint is as good as I can expect it to get. Also, I'm worried about rubbing away the paint, as I've seen in a few spots that the harder I hit it, the more the paint "faded." What are your thoughts on it?

 

[Bike from the Dead]

Time to get out of the "Page 2 Slacker" status!

Okay, so not much has happened with this bike lately, but I did spend some time shining up some parts with rubbing compound and #0000 steel wool last Thursday and earlier today. (It just turned to 12am as I typed this. You know what time it is? It's tomorrow!)

I'm more or less done cleaning the front fender and chain guard, and I made good progress on the rear fender today as well. Something I decided to try was using a mix of rubbing compound and steel wool to gently scrape this red paint that spilled on these parts. I found that rubbing compound and a sock could both remove the rust and some spilled paint off the pinstripes on the front fender, so I decided to test and see if fine steel wool could work too. Turns out, it works great as long as you're careful! I didn't get all the spilled paint off the parts, but I'm pretty happy with how much better they look now.

Sorry I didn't take more/better photos. I was just focused on making progress after stalling for a bit.

Truth be told, I've been a tad slower on the bike stuff this time around mostly because I'm spending more time working on my art and learning how to share it on social media. I haven't had the best luck finding work, so I'm working on my own designs to hopefully sell them and start earning some money. Progress has been slow, but I'm figuring out how to better manage my time, set deadlines, use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to ink and color my sketches, share stuff on social media, and just plain draw more often. Maybe I'll even share some of what I'm working on here, if for no other reason than to keep me from falling back onto Page 2 again when I don't have any bike progress to report.

My art's not the only thing I've been working on in the background though. Ever since I put my Class 2 build on the backburner, I've been itching to build something custom out of the parts I have in stock. As nice as this Western Flyer will be once it's all back together, it doesn't satisfy that creative urge I have to make something that's my own design. I need a wild custom bike project to help balance out this conservative restoration project. As luck would have it, I have everything (or most everything) I need to build 2 custom Schwinns!

First is this 1952 Schwinn straight bar I got at the Haysville, KS bicycle swap meet earlier this year. Odds are this'll just be a quick and easy build, as I just plan to wire-brush it down to bare metal, give it a satin clear coat, and throw on most if not all the parts I had on my previous 1952 Schwinn straight bar I built last year. I'll probably do a few other things to differentiate it from the last one, but overall, it'll be a near-identical build on a new frame.

Next, for a trip on the wilder side, I'm building this 1958 Schwinn cantilever frame I got from another bike friend up in Missouri. The main reason I'm throwing this bike together is because I want to learn how to spray paint a bike. I've done spray clear coats before, but not an actual paintjob. I want to practice masking off designs with tape and paper or whatever to achieve some fun effects, and this bike is the perfect guilt-free canvas for me to experiment with. The one real caveat I have for this build is that I can only use parts that I already have in stock. I can't afford to buy more parts right now other than maybe the odd tube and tire, but I'm willing to allow myself to buy a few cans of spray paint for this project. I've already decided on the stance and most of the parts I want to use for this build, but there are still a few things I need to figure out, especially the paint scheme.

As much as I'd like to swap out my Class 2 BMX build for one of these Schwinns, I'm just going to stick them in their own threads outside the Build Off.

Well, that's all the progress to report for now! With any luck, I'll be done shining up parts for this Western Flyer by the end of the week, but we'll see!

 

[Robert Troub]

Finally making some more progress. I just got the new pedals for The Old West just earlier this week, and they look just right for the bike.
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View attachment 1383498

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Couple problems, though.
1. I want to remove the rust from the pedals, especially the threads, but I don't know how I can do that without affecting the red stripes, the plastic, or the bearings.
2. The bearings need to be serviced, especially on the right pedal. How would you go about cleaning up the bearings and reapplying grease to them? I don't know how to take these apart, or if it's even possible, so any advice on how to make these pedals functional again would be much appreciated.

I'm going to try and wash these pedals sometime this week, and figure out the next step for the wheels. My goal here is to try and get this bike riding again, if not completely finished, by April 21st, my Grandpa's birthday, since he's the one who gifted the bike to me.

Stay tuned! More to come!

Clean them on a wire wheel.....