I have always admired the fixie and ss riders around town and thought I would start to look for something cool to ride around the hood. During my search I kept running across a lot of cool cruisers, townies and rat rods. There's a guy out here in Golden, CO that has a site called http://www.luxlow.com who has some sweet "Patina Restores" and a lot of great bikes. I had never thought of doing a rough restore that kept the old look, but I was hooked.
It dawned on me that my Dad had a really cool Hiawatha that he had gotten in the early 50's as a kid and I had told him to never sell that bike because I would want it some day. Well, that day came, so I loaded up the fam into the Swagger Wagon (aka Toyota Sienna) and drove out to the farm in Nebraska. After a couple of days of helping out with the harvest by driving tractor and grain truck I had earned my right to claim the Hiawatha St Croix as my own. Now I'm on a mission to get this thing restored. I will probably have LuxLow handle this one for me, but I envision trying to tackle something on my own some day.
Check out my pics. I have some more and will upload in a project thread at some point.
I'd love to hear any feedback, advice, do's/dont's or anything that could help me make my first Rat Rod project a success. I'm not sure how to do a good cleaning to get the paint to shine out a bit and maybe remove a bit of the rust.
I'm not sure what the part is called, but I need the "strut" that goes from the head-tube area down to the hub. They are broke off and missing from my bike. The bike rack was also broke and jerry rigged in place with a couple of makeshift straps. So if anyone has leads on either of these parts, I'd be grateful.
a good cleaning and some grease ia all I'd do as well. the how-to section has some good info on cleaning the rust and paint off.
come on you can tell us.. there is a good chance your building one