So i dug for a solid hour through my garage to find all of the parts that were from this one, and it didn't end so well. While I found most of the parts (frame with BB and crankset, fenders, seatpost, wheels, rack without mount), most of the parts from it were used in other bikes, or just fell apart, like the seat, steering bar, stem, fork & pedals.
Lying around in various basements, attics etc. didn't do any good to the chrome...
I also found that the right crank arm is slightly bent - not in a way that it needs a lot of bending, so I'll just leave it beaten like that. It has more authentic feeleing that way.
First things first - I cleaned and regreased the BB (I didn't think I even opened it 11 years ago - my bad
). To my suprise it was in quite good shape for the 51 years and unknown amount of miles on it. The crank arms just recieved some cleaning and polishing from all the rusty spots.
I definitely need to take the camera back to my shop. I thought that my phone can handle pictures, but it just has a mind of it's own.
Dug up some used 20" tires from my stash of parts to use on this one, but the more important part - the wheels.
The rear, one, after fitting with a new tire & truing looked quite OK...
But after I tried to spin the sprocket to check if the brake works, I found out, that, the rear hub is total trash. It needed at least 2 full spins after breaking to jump into gear again, and sometimes it didn't even want to do that
. So I took it apart, and realised that there is another gigantic problem:
Eyup, the sprocket is screwed on, not held by a spring like in all the modern torpedo hubs, and this one definitely seen better days. There was nothing more I could do but, dig trough my parts, take 3 whole Romet rear hubs, and few spare parts, and rebuild everything using more modern, yet still fitting spares. After an hour or so of changing parts, droping balls on the floor and shouting a few swears at it - I finally made it back into working condition.
Oh and
@RustyGold - here is a close up of the archer figure. between his feet are the two digits indicating that this hub was produced in 1968.
Also a fun fact:
The symbol above the archers head is the "First Production Category" symbol. The propaganda was, that only the best products would receive the stamp... well, you could find almost everywhere
On hubs, fridges, wrenches, no matter how bad they were - they always were of the best production category
When it comes to the front wheel that was on it - that 18" with a super small tire, and one missing spoke, I just gave up on it - the tire just fell apart when I touched it. But the good news is that I found the original front wheel! Yet again, to tell it was in any rideable shape... Good thing that I had a front wheel with a Shimano FH-R700 roller brake hub, that I found in a dumpster. The rim was totally corroded, but after some time...
Really one could not tell if this was an original Romet wheel or not, since I even used original Romet brass nipples. Also my luck is that Karat bikes had rims with 36 spokes, just like normal sized bikes. Most of the Romet made 20" wheels (like from the Karat's successor - Wigry) were made for only 28 spokes. Oh, and the original front hub...
Yeah, seen better days...
So with a wheelset finally ready we can start... oh, but wiat! There is one more detail missing!
Now that's better!
Also another weird thing - Rear tire is a 20x2.0 with a ETRTO of 54-406, and the front one is supposed to be a 20x2.125 with a measured ETRTO of 50-406... I just don't know what is with those cheap chineese manufacturers
Also mounted the rack with new mounts made out of an old seatpost part (the original mounts, as you may guess were missing)
Right now I'm thinking about more than one bike to put in this Build-Off, since i have reeeeeally a lot of free time at work right now...