RRBBO13 Cheep Teena- Completed! Tons O Photos

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Joined
Jul 23, 2012
Messages
247
Reaction score
802
Location
Long Beach, CA
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Hey everyone. I'm finally back after getting a hard earned 5th place in RRBBO11 and taking last year off. I have a '36 Hawthorne Duralium that I'm itching to build, but I have little to no time so this '80 Schwinn will have to do. I'm actually killing two birds with one stone. I do a poker run/charity ride/pub crawl here in Long Beach, CA every year called Long Beach Chopper Rally and the Grand Prize winner gets a custom Schwinn built by yours truly, so this one will be it. Also, the event is June 16th, so the bike needs to be done by then.

This frame is a January, 1980 Schwinn along with most of the parts. The wheels and tires, springer fork, fenders, light, reflector, and tank are all 100th anniversary issue. The original paint does not look as good in person as it does here so I don't feel that bad getting rid of it.

As far as build style, it will be simple, low, and covered in some sort of faux-tina. I'm going to use all of the hard parts you see here, buy some tires and a seat and grips, maaaaaaaybe a set of rims and hubs if i have time. But my challenge to myself is to see if i can make something cool and old looking only using relatively run of the mill parts that can be obtained cheaply and easily. We'll see how it goes!
 
Welcome back! I loved your bare and beautiful BO11 build!
Hope you have fun building this one out!
 
Did some ebaying last night. the black seat and coke bottle grip combo was not available so I contacted IJT directly and they're on the way! Pretty cool!
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Plain Jane brickyards are still tough to beat. Although I look around for other options every time I build a bike.
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Well, my personal deadline is in a couple weeks. Time to GTB i suppose. Hopefully we'll see some progress photos over the weekend. I don't think I'm doing anything you all haven't seen many times before, but hopefully the execution is such that the bike racks up a few votes from you guys.
 
So I finally got started on the tear down. Not super excited but progress.
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These are the parts that will get the patina. Paint treatment. Well, maybe a few others, too. Time to start sanding.
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These parts.... well, they’re going to get a patina treatment, too. Just a different one.
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Got this in the mail today. I may just have to use the 90s Schwinn wheels if I run out of time. But if I don’t, I will use this hub with an electra-style drop center wheel like the one above. They’re my go to becaus they look old but are super lightweight. And they come with a front hub that looks very close to the HD Schwinn/whizzer hubs from BITD. All I need now is a cheap Electra for sale in the area! Can you tell I’m stalling because the hard work is about to start!
 
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As I’m getting ready to start the painting process it dawned on me that a well worn, red 70s Schwinn was exactly how I got involved with classic bikes in the first place. By 12 years old I had already built a couple BMX bikes and even had some luck flipping one. I bought a really beat up Huffy BMX bike for $5 at a garage sale. I spent a week at my dad’s shop that summer, and instead of being the usual slave labor I sanded that frame and fork down to nothin. Cherry red was the best engine paint color on the shelf, so that’s what color it became. I bought alloy BMX parts for my Laguna with every dollar I ever earned so I had tons of silver and blue components to throw on it (worth a fortune now). I brought it home that weekend and cruised the neighborhood and my neighbor, David just had to have it. He traded me a beat up bike that he recently bought of unknown manufacture (to him). By Sunday I had a new Redline. Still have the Laguna and Redline to this day. When school started it suddenly became not that cool to ride your BMX bike every day. Then as luck would have it, I found a 70s red Schwinn at another garage sale for $10. Another week at the shop sanding and polishing chrome and finally I took all my money and headed to the Schwinn shop. I bought black foam handlebar pads, black Ame grips, blackwall Schwinn knobbies, and get this- Schwinn silver base coat and blue candy rattle cans of paint. (Not sure if it’s true but I heard they stopped selling the paint because the warehouse workers were huffing the paint and dying. The base coat literally smelled exactly like peaches!) I did a pretty stellar job for a 12 year old but with my heavy hand the paint came out way darker than factory. I rode that thing all over for years, mostly with my skateboard on the bars headed to skate spots or to neighborhood high school parties. It finally disappeared out of my aunts garage along with my bullseye-flight crank etc etc GT (the last BMX bike I built). The whole love affair started back up again when I built his and hers cruisers for my GF at the time. Everyone rode cheap mountain bikes in the mid 90s that never saw dirt and I hated it! Anyway, the red Schwinn thing just dawned on me when I was getting ready for primer so thanks for indulging me.
 
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Since my event is coming up, I have some other bike stuff going on. I built this one for my buddy Steve a few years ago. I added the correct bars since I don’t need the ones on the build off bike. All original except the wheels tires grips. Not a real CA Cruiser though, obv.
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The $75 Electra I found and stole the wheels off of. I’ll finish it and put it up for sale tomorrow. I have a “his” version to offload as well.
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The wheels from the BOB. They’re just fake Arayas from the 90s and aren’t marked as Schwinn or anything so away they go.
 

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