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Klunky.Skunky

Klunky.Skunky

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I put this bike up in intros as well. Originally, I bought it with the intention of putting a two stroke on it, just to cruise the back roads out here. It's a Genesis Astra 29, it's my first bike as an adult other than the bike i ride for work (intro). Here's a stock image.
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My first issue with the bike was the handle bars. No matter how I adjusted them I just couldn't get comfortable. Al through my childhood and teenage years, I rode a bmx. Those are the bars I'm used to. So I started looking online for pictures of cruisers with bmx bars, to see if it had been done. During that search, I discovered Klunkers. Immediately obsessed, I spent hours looking at custom jobs. Along the way I found this forum, as wel as an old huffy rock it on Craigslist. My first bike as a kid was literally that bike, so for 20$ I picked it up and a Kent la jolla. The first thing I did when I got it home was take the bars from the huffy and put them on the gen.
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But it still felt wrong. It looked funny, and it wasn't simple enough. So I stripped the front brake, rear derailleur, and took a few links out of the chain. But it still gave me heck, chain jumping and all. Still though, I got a few fun rides in.
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At this point I needed a break so I decided to rat out the la jolla for my fiances brother to cruise on. Stripped it down, painted it black, and called it good. He loved the frame but hated the coaster.
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And that's all I did with the bikes for a few weeks. My fiancé likes her bike stock, and I didn't have another to work on, and I could not for the life of me figure out what was up with my chain.


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Then Tuesday rolled around. My fiances dad brings me two rusty old mountain bikes, and my neighbor happens to see him unload and gives me two full suspension mountain bikes. And my fiances old man also brings me a brand new road master 24in with front suspension. But the bad news is he pops the front tire on my Genesis.

So Wednesday my fiances brother comes out and wants to ride. I'm having issues with my bike and I really didn't wanna ride the Kent. He loves the road master, and asks me if I would be able to swap the frames so that it's all the stuff from the road master on the Kent frame. I say sure, I can try, so I start tearing apart the Kent. Then I figure since its apart, I'm gonna try the wheels from it on my gen.
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And I love it. So I also put the Kent handle bars on. I love the low and slow ride, the simplicity of the coaster brake and single gear. I'm starting on the Kent build next week, and I'll post pictures later, but my main questions are now what should I do next? I hate the paint job. The flake is ugly, there's decals everywhere, I like the color but I hate the paint job. I think that is gonna be coming up soon. I'd like to put 3 tree forks on the front, especially since I still want to motorize it... But I am thinking maybe I should go electric instead of 2 stroke, or at least go for a 4 stroke. I also want to get bigger tires. I'm a big guy at 6 foot even and 235 pounds, and I need a little more tire than what I have on there. I love the small wheels though. So maybe a thicker side wall?

Basically I'm idea hunting at this point. It's a fun ride but in no way is it finished. The other bike has a definite direction, but that's really only because it's for someone else. My bike on the other hand is still evolving, and I'm not sure where to go from here.


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As a side note, I did figure out what was wrong with my chain. I had the wheel seated all the way back when I removed the links, so there was no real option to adjust the tension, which led to problems. And I broke my only chain tool, which is why my 29in wheels, which are now patched and good to go, have still not returned.


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If unsure on paint and want a temporary change.. can always use plasti-dip.. they are starting to make really fun finishes with it and colors.
Im looking to try some of the peralizer over some single stage white base.

Advantage can always peel it back off..
 
pholTmonx said:
If unsure on paint and want a temporary change.. can always use plasti-dip.. they are starting to make really fun finishes with it and colors.
Im looking to try some of the peralizer over some single stage white base.

Advantage can always peel it back off..
Click to expand...
I'll take a good detail shot to show what I mean about the flake paint job in the morning. Not sure what else to call it... If plastids will cover it that would be perfect. But what I was thinking was sanding it down smooth, so that some of the blue was still there but there is bare metal showing as well, and then putting clear coat over that. I'm not going to mess with the paint until I have all the parts I'm looking for.


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Plasti dip is just a quick cheap alter... its hard to mess up and easy to remove when ready to run a paintjob.. the black has a cool mild luster and dosent stain or fade like primer.
 
Looks to me like those decals are stickers...
Peel them off. Now. Heat gun will help.
Then after all the sticker goo is cleaned off I'd mask the frame off and paint darts on the front in satin black, similar to the fat tire bike above, probably end up looking pretty decent with the faux bed liner blue. Paint the basket black too if you're keeping it.
Black n Blue.

Carl.
 
GuitarlCarl said:
Looks to me like those decals are stickers...
Peel them off. Now. Heat gun will help.
Then after all the sticker goo is cleaned off I'd mask the frame off and paint darts on the front in satin black, similar to the fat tire bike above, probably end up looking pretty decent with the faux bed liner blue. Paint the basket black too if you're keeping it.
Black n Blue.

Carl.
Click to expand...
The paint job has this texture like its anodized. I'm worried that in the process of attempting to pull the decals I'm gonna chip the paint job(very easy I chipped it just from adjusting the chain tension) plus I honestly hate the texture. I love the color and as soon as the weather dries up I'm planning on painting the basket and the stem black, and I like the idea of the darts. But part of me wants to strip it to the bare metal, while leaving some of the blue intact, let it sit for a week or 2 and get a little bit of patina, then go over it with a clear coat to seal it. I'm off work for the next three days so between household chores I'll be doing some work and posting some pics. In the meantime, can anybody tell me what the tube size is for the headset? I'm having trouble locating any info on that but from what I understand it's larger than standard which makes it very difficult to choose a pair of forks.

Speaking of forks, I did discover that the forks that come on this bike are steel. I haven't taken it apart to find out if the stem is threaded yet but I'll be doing that in the next few days and taking pics of the whole process.


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Also, I'm thinking of putting a dynamo light kit on this. I don't know anything about threading hubs or trying wheels yet so I'm considering the friction based Dynamo kits. Thoughts?


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Just a quick progress shot for today. I've decided to strip it all down to the bare metal, let it gather a little patina, then sand and clear coat.for all those saying the stickers were stickers, you were not wrong. But that texture I was referring to as anodized was actually a texture wrap put on the whole bike, which went over the decals and made them impossible to remove without sanding. So I sanded them all to the bare metal for a quick photo, then got started on sanding the rest of the bike. I ran out of sandpaper pretty quick because it was only one sheet, and it was dark before I got home with more, so here's the only shot of today's progress I got.
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Quick progress report here, got some more of the frame sanded down, but I think I'm gonna just leave it half done like this for awhile, honestly the look is growing on me. I was fooling around with some parts I had and found this crank arm with pedal that I was missing the match too. I knew I had really messed up the stock cables when I pulled them off, and the lack of a rear brake was keeping me from wanting to throw the 29s back on the bike. So I brought the bike in and played around a bit with the cables I had and that crank arm, and came up with a suicide rear brake. Nothing is permanent about this but it was a fun little mod to put on there, and once I figured out exactly how the brakes work it was surprisingly simple to rig up.

Also, finally got my bmx bars from my fiances brother. He found them in the shop and brought them to me, off his old hyper co bmx I used to ride around on filming him skateboarding. Now I think I have a slow leak from the valve stem on the front wheel as well, it was the initial reason I put the 24s on the bike but I can't figure out where the leak is, submerged the tube no bubbles etc. I'm hoping by some luck I managed to fix it by accident, but my next move is just to by new tubes.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday are my days off. If all goes well, hopefully by the end of Thursday I'll have a custom rack rigged up from some old metal tubing and a few old license plates I have around.

That's all for now, as always, I'm open to suggestions.


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