Ted Williams muscle bike build

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I’m almost finished with my son’s Stranger Things Mike’s bike build, so now I have to build my daughter one. She wants a “Mike’s bike, except purple”
I’m starting with a crusty Murray built Ted Williams, which is pretty much the same as a Sears Spyder Of the same era.
I’m not planning on an elaborate build, just going to blast everything, new paint, and a new seat, bars, chainring, etc. She’s wanting whitewall tires, so I may just change to completely different wheelset and save these drop centers, since they are actually in really good shape. I’d rather put a new slick on it keep them on the bike, but I let her choose how she wanted it.

Here is the starting point and tear down.
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I got my Ted Williams head badge decal in today. I got it from Bruce Crawford. He does a great job on these! I also used one of his decals on the StRATo Flyer.
It is even on the reflective vinyl like the original.
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I’ve decided against painting this bike purple, and instead I’m going to do a refresh on it. I’m sure most of the chrome besides the sissy bar and crankset will clean up pretty nice, so I’m going to get the chrome looking as good as I can, replace the sissy bar, crankset, and seat and I sand the bike down repaint the frame and chainguard in the original colors, except I might go satin to not look TOO good. It will be presentable and I’ll call it done.
 
I found enough of the original color in the frame and fork to get a decent match.
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I usually mix up automotive paint for my bikes, but being this is just a refresh, I went down to the local parts store this morning and found a metallic red and metallic blue in automotive touch up paint that matched the original almost perfectly. I had already prepped this frame and fork because I was going to paint it purple, so I all I really had to do was mask it up and paint it.
It actually turned out really nice! The paint is made to be a base coat and is supposed to have a clear sprayed over it, but I believe I’m going to leave it like this. It is kinda semigloss, but doesn’t look too good and shiny against all the original chrome. I robbed a sissy bar off of another bike and mocked it up after 3 hours of the paint drying. I’ve got to blast the guard and paint it white and go rob a better crank out of parts bike, and this thing will look pretty good!

My wife is going to make me a new transition stripe that separates the red and blue. I left original to keep the original position, but I’ll just peel it off and put the new one where it was.
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I had seen painted Spyder chain guards for sale and we wondered which bike they were from. Now I know they came on the Ted Williams versions.
 
I had seen painted Spyder chain guards for sale and we wondered which bike they were from. Now I know they came on the Ted Williams versions.
I found some pretty cool literature on this bike and I ordered a white paint pen designed to use on tires, and I’m going to try to redo the dual white lines on the slick and front tire. The raised lines are there, so hopefully I can just paint the top of them.
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I found a nice crank and a really nice Murray chainring and installed them today. I probably won’t stay with the blue pedals, but they do kinda look cool on there.
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Good ole cheese grater crank
Yep!
I found it interesting that Murray and Huffy both built these bikes for Sears, but I don’t Know what years. Both versions got the Sears Spyder style gaurd.
 
I have one as well...from what I can tell from the ads, they may have sourced these from Huffy and Murray at the same time. Mines Murray.

The biggest differences I’ve noticed between the 2 besides the chainring is that Murray has a little different shaped cantilever frame with the typical pointed dropouts that most Murrays of the era had and the Murray arrowhead shaped reflectors on the fork.
The Huffy had a the 5 spoke chainring, and a braced front fender, as opposed to the floating fender on the Murray. As far as I can tell, both of them shared the same rear fender, guard, sissy bars, and bars. It seems there were several seat options for both brands.

I have the Murray as well, but I have to admit, I prefer the shape of the Huffy frame, though I do like the Murray dropouts.

Murray
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Huffy
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I re-did the double white stripes on the tires today. It looks really cool!
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Got the guard back today. When I get this blocked and painted I’ll be in business.
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I painted the guard, put on the new transition decals, and put the Free Spirit decal on the guard, but unfortunately I stuck the decal on the guard off the bike. I matched the bottom of the letters to the bottom edge of the guard thinking that would be level on the bike - but I was wrong!

I’m going to redo it, but I wanted to post a little progress.

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