Did a full renovation of this baby for a friend of mine. It spent the last ~40 years in his grandparents basement, and he wanted to make a restoration & give it to his mother, who actually rode it as her second bike (borrowed from his grandmother) in the seventies.
Before:
It was almost complete (missing the original bell, battery operated headlight, and saddle bag), but those years of standing in the basement werent so good for it. Something heavy was leaning on the back, a few drops of white paint had been splattered on it, and all those years it was standing on it's tires.
Had to change the chain (expanded links), all the spokes (awfull green patina - non cleanable to a perfect state), one of the crank mechanism bearings (fell apart), tires & inner tubes. Also bought all of the missing parts.
After:
Broke down to bare frame (also took the wheels apart - obviously), cleaned, polished the chromes & stainless parts. Put new Finish Line Teflon grease everywhere, and all the parts are protected with a few layers of Finish Line Showroom (3 layers on painted parts, 2 layers on chrome, stainless & rubber).
This bicycles were only made for export to US, Canada & Latin America, so they are allmost not optainable in Poland (being the country where they were produced, yeah, sounds silly but that's how it worked
). The only way to buy a bicycle like this was to have connections to somebody working in one of the plants that produced them, to someone who owned a bicycle shop/workshop (and had connections to someone from the factory), or be a higher ranking/having a connection to some higher ranking coummunist party member.
Pictures from the restoration - soon
Before:
It was almost complete (missing the original bell, battery operated headlight, and saddle bag), but those years of standing in the basement werent so good for it. Something heavy was leaning on the back, a few drops of white paint had been splattered on it, and all those years it was standing on it's tires.
Had to change the chain (expanded links), all the spokes (awfull green patina - non cleanable to a perfect state), one of the crank mechanism bearings (fell apart), tires & inner tubes. Also bought all of the missing parts.
After:
Broke down to bare frame (also took the wheels apart - obviously), cleaned, polished the chromes & stainless parts. Put new Finish Line Teflon grease everywhere, and all the parts are protected with a few layers of Finish Line Showroom (3 layers on painted parts, 2 layers on chrome, stainless & rubber).
This bicycles were only made for export to US, Canada & Latin America, so they are allmost not optainable in Poland (being the country where they were produced, yeah, sounds silly but that's how it worked
). The only way to buy a bicycle like this was to have connections to somebody working in one of the plants that produced them, to someone who owned a bicycle shop/workshop (and had connections to someone from the factory), or be a higher ranking/having a connection to some higher ranking coummunist party member.Pictures from the restoration - soon
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