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What Rat-Bike did you ride today?

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What’s up with the hose clamps ?
Oh, yeah, I guess you mean me.
They hold a piece of metal to the other side to make the old block pedals a little more grippy. I learned to ride a bike with pedals just like these. My foot slipped off once when I was a kid. If you want, I'll take a picture of the other side of the pedals. They're sort of homemade rat trap pedals.
 
1950 JC Higgins Colorflow rat klunker, bullmoose bars, fork missing springer assembly, Chino Hills, CA
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There's a local shop in our area, a non-profit one that takes donated bikes and fixes them up to sell inexpensively to those who wouldn't be able to afford a decent machine otherwise. Occasionally they get some pretty nice donations through the door, so I dropped by once in a while to have a look and recently found this. Its a Canadian made Gardin mid range road bike from the mid eighties. All kinds of nice stuff, Columbus tubing, Cambio Rino driveline, Modolo brakes. I paid over the top for it, but they do boost the price on the nicer stuff to make money for the shop for parts, so I'm okay with that.

Being 60 and having a bad back and other assorted problems there's no way I'm riding a roadbike any more so its been fitted out with more humane bars and a nice Brooks saddle & grips as well as some modern lights and such.

The shop laced cheesy deep Chinese rims onto it because they didn't have any tubular tires. (I got the original rims with it) but they do look sorta cool.

Quite fun!

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There's a local shop in our area, a non-profit one that takes donated bikes and fixes them up to sell inexpensively to those who wouldn't be able to afford a decent machine otherwise. Occasionally they get some pretty nice donations through the door, so I dropped by once in a while to have a look and recently found this. Its a Canadian made Gardin mid range road bike from the mid eighties. All kinds of nice stuff, Columbus tubing, Cambio Rino driveline, Modolo brakes. I paid over the top for it, but they do boost the price on the nicer stuff to make money for the shop for parts, so I'm okay with that.

Being 60 and having a bad back and other assorted problems there's no way I'm riding a roadbike any more so its been fitted out with more humane bars and a nice Brooks saddle & grips as well as some modern lights and such.

The shop laced cheesy deep Chinese rims onto it because they didn't have any tubular tires. (I got the original rims with it) but they do look sorta cool.

Quite fun!

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Bet it's the fastest cruiser in town!
 
The gearing is stupidly tall. Once in a while I get it rolling with a tail wind and flip the chain onto that big front chainring and then yes, its hauls!

and then I go home and have a nap.
Cool find/ride...Our similar donating bike shop where we can find outdated vintage parts and bikes for a reasonable price is called 'Recycleistas' ...Thanks for posting and quit complaining! We're all getting old!

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Everytime I ride this one I promise myself to take it out more often. The guy I rode with brought a modern cruiser with a Nexus 7 speed. We swapped for a while. He really liked it. "It's smooth riding, it's quick!"
Souped up 1955? Hawthorne.
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