This just in: Coppertone 1967 Schwinn Deluxe Collegiate

[acg_schwinn]

More fine-tuning, or maybe just fighting, with the generator tonight, and I think we have reached a compromise where it will not hit the lettering so directly on each revolution of the tire. I did a mile and a half on it just now, and it sounds like it's already running a little smoother.

In time I think its steel drive wheel will wear down the edges of the raised lettering in its path. I compared the installation and alignment with the green 1968 Rescue Collegiate, which gets ridden almost exclusively at night and which has the whitewall version of these same Straight Line Sports Touring tires, and that one has worn down the lettering on that side to where it's practically invisible.

So I'm calling it done for now, and can now pack up the whole mess I made in the garage. More photos of the bike in its new form tomorrow.

 

[acg_schwinn]

Okay, following a one-day rain delay, we have some finished photos at last. We're just talking Daily Rider quality here, but nevertheless it feels really good on the road, very quiet (freewheel noise practically nonexistent) and nice tight braking.

You can see from the Tail End Tuesday shot below that this bike is heavy on the amber shades now. I swapped the old mismatched block pedals for a nice pair of 1972 Bow Sport pedals with the small early amber reflectors, and may still add a pair of clear Schwinn wheel reflectors, as safe night riding is what I'm after with this bike.

That brings us to those unwanted holes in the replacement front fender from Kratefest. I located a matched set of Stimsonite 10 2-pie reflectors in amber and red, added a matching bezel for the front, and installed it in the on-center hole that someone had drilled. I was worried that it would be too frou-frou to leave in place, but now I'm sold on it. That amber reflector up front looks like it was designed to be there.

 

[acg_schwinn]

I'm still not satisfied with the generator performance against the tire sidewall, so I'm going to have a go at carefully block-sanding the raised lettering to lower its profile under the drive wheel. The old tire is pretty glazed to begin with, so breaking through the glazed outer surface should help the drive wheel to wear things down smooth.

Right now the generator is a bit draggy and noisy. I had to do an unplanned comparison test last night between this bike and the Rescue Collegiate (which has 100+ miles of nighttime riding on it) when the old headlight bulb burned out on this one, forcing me to double back and change bikes, and the green Collegiate's lighting, same as this one, was smooth and quiet, so I know this one can do better. If the generator doesn't improve over the next 20 miles or so of use, I'll swap it for another.

Remaining to be done: clean/lube/rebuild the derailleur system front to back, add the correct saddlebag (standard issue on the Deluxe models), smooth down the back tire sidewall.

You can see from the seat height that I could benefit by going up one more in frame size (this is a 21" Model 731), but when shopping for 58-year-old bikes, we'll take what we can get.

 

[acg_schwinn]

A short update on the ongoing saga...

I mentioned that the bike had come with a new but uninstalled inner tube for the back wheel, which was leaking around the base of the valve when inflated. I popped in the replacement inner tube during the project and thought that was that. Of course not.

I discovered that the back wheel was still leaking around the base of the valve, especially if you wiggled the valve stem a bit. I put off doing anything about it since it was a fairly slow leak: I could just pump it up prior to riding and deal with it later. "Later" finally came this week when we're all snowed in or (especially tomorrow) frozen in, with a predicted high tomorrow of -3°F. (That's the temperature, not the wind chill.)

So I pulled the back wheel off again, pulled the tire, inner tube and rim strip, and went over everything in detail. Nothing had pierced the tire, and the rim strip looked okay, but finally I poked around the welded seam of the rim, through which the valve hole is drilled, and that was pretty ugly. I pulled out the Dremel grinder, used an end mill followed by a wire brush, and managed to knock down the sharp edges and smooth things out:

The rim strip lay smooth and flat over this, another new inner tube went in, and the tire seated perfectly with no fuss, and no air leaking out past the valve stem. Should be good to go now, assuming we ever get a warm day again.

 

[acg_schwinn]

I'm still not satisfied with the generator performance against the tire sidewall, so I'm going to have a go at carefully block-sanding the raised lettering to lower its profile under the drive wheel. The old tire is pretty glazed to begin with, so breaking through the glazed outer surface should help the drive wheel to wear things down smooth.

We're having a spell of warm weather, so I'm back in the garage to try to get the generator set working as well as I know it can. The generator is turning just fine and oriented as it should be against the tire (which has a single raised side rib that seems to be intended for this very thing) but the tire sidewall lettering is just too tall for smooth operation. The generator bounces up over the first letter as the tire rotates and skids over the rest before finally getting a grip on the other side.

It turned out that the headlight bulb had not burned out during an earlier ride as I thought, but the violent ride that the generator was getting against the tire had actually shaken the entire mounting loose, until the ground screw backed off and broke the circuit to the headlight.

I don't want to replace the tire because it's fine otherwise, and I have never had this much of a headache with a generator set, but there's a first time for everything. I changed my mind on block sanding and instead got out my Dremel with a 3/4" steel wire brush (flat disc type), and put in some very careful quality time to knock down the raised lettering below the level of the raised sidewall rib. The results are looking pretty good so far:

What's especially interesting is how the background ribs seem to continue right on through where the letters were. I think that might just be the wire wheel deflecting into the grooves before it reaches the letters, and it then carries right on through them the same way.

This takes a really delicate touch, and I have more to go yet, but this looks promising so far.

Oh, yeah: wear eye protection. I always do anyway when using the Dremel, and in this case I was practically nose-up to the tire to be sure I didn't dig in too far, and although everything went fine, later in the evening I discovered that I had a piece of wire brush embedded in my forehead. I definitely got the memo on that.