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- Aug 3, 2010
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Well now that Dark Horse 2 is done I can get back to work on the other million bikes in the old shed. I picked this beauty up on Craigslist because I have always wanted one and I finally found one that wasn't made of gold but it was in pretty sad shape but not to fear a rat rodder like me has some tricks up his sleeve to bring it back to life. I am still not sure what direction I am going to go but I have a few ideas. I lost track of time and accidentally let the oven cleaner sit a bit too long on the fork and it started to eat the original paint with it. Also found out the chain guard is from a blue Collgate and is not original. I am thinking of going one of these four ways:
1. Take it back down to the red with some bare metal spots and clear it as an "aged original"
2. All the way to bare metal rat rod style (I haven't done one yet but seen plenty of cool examples here)
3. Full re-paint and restore (Boring and with the mini apes it's not original anyway so probably not this one)
4. Resto-mod original style decals but with some metal flake red paint instead of the bland Schwinn red then maybe do the darts and lettering with a pearl white.
So here's the starting point a 1960 Schwinn Tornado
I got it broken down to the frame and started getting the ugly blue off of it. It has had more than one re-spray over the years, it was originally red, then a coat of grey primer, then a burgundy red, then white, then blue.
getting there
Fork was looking good but I let it sit too long and some of the original red came off with it :x
As she sits now
More to come tomorrow.
1. Take it back down to the red with some bare metal spots and clear it as an "aged original"
2. All the way to bare metal rat rod style (I haven't done one yet but seen plenty of cool examples here)
3. Full re-paint and restore (Boring and with the mini apes it's not original anyway so probably not this one)
4. Resto-mod original style decals but with some metal flake red paint instead of the bland Schwinn red then maybe do the darts and lettering with a pearl white.
So here's the starting point a 1960 Schwinn Tornado
I got it broken down to the frame and started getting the ugly blue off of it. It has had more than one re-spray over the years, it was originally red, then a coat of grey primer, then a burgundy red, then white, then blue.
getting there
Fork was looking good but I let it sit too long and some of the original red came off with it :x
As she sits now
More to come tomorrow.