This was the first Collegiate I bought, the one that got me hooked on "lightweight" Schwinns. The intent was to fix it up for my wife, but my daughter claimed it once she saw the color.
She loves the way it looks, and has been on a few rides on it, but she was not a fan of hunting for gears with the '60's-tech stem shifter. So she picked a 3-speed Free Spirit from the herd as her regular and now this has been mostly sitting. I decided to try to upgrade it with a more modern shifter a few months ago, but the project stalled when I found out it takes more than just attaching a new shifter to a sloppy old derailleur.
Now this weekend I gathered up the bike and the bits and pieces I had unsuccessfully tried to use and dragged it all over to the LBS. The owner knows I tinker with old stuff, and he's always willing to help me figure out how to make things work, and he has tons of old used parts he'll sell cheap or give away. Turns out I had a good derailleur and shifter, but I needed a derailleur hanger adapter to make a direct-mount derailleur mount to the axle, a 6-speed freewheel with the right spacing and twisted/beveled teeth to play nice with index shifting, and a new chain for good measure.
I had to go back today and ask him for help removing the old freewheel because I don't have that tool, but now it's all set up and it works great. In my head, it feels like I swapped the Powerglide out of my old Impala for a 700R4.
I like this so much that I'm going to set up a camelback Collegiate up like this for myself, except using MTB rims. Let the parts hunting begin...
She loves the way it looks, and has been on a few rides on it, but she was not a fan of hunting for gears with the '60's-tech stem shifter. So she picked a 3-speed Free Spirit from the herd as her regular and now this has been mostly sitting. I decided to try to upgrade it with a more modern shifter a few months ago, but the project stalled when I found out it takes more than just attaching a new shifter to a sloppy old derailleur.
Now this weekend I gathered up the bike and the bits and pieces I had unsuccessfully tried to use and dragged it all over to the LBS. The owner knows I tinker with old stuff, and he's always willing to help me figure out how to make things work, and he has tons of old used parts he'll sell cheap or give away. Turns out I had a good derailleur and shifter, but I needed a derailleur hanger adapter to make a direct-mount derailleur mount to the axle, a 6-speed freewheel with the right spacing and twisted/beveled teeth to play nice with index shifting, and a new chain for good measure.
I had to go back today and ask him for help removing the old freewheel because I don't have that tool, but now it's all set up and it works great. In my head, it feels like I swapped the Powerglide out of my old Impala for a 700R4.
I like this so much that I'm going to set up a camelback Collegiate up like this for myself, except using MTB rims. Let the parts hunting begin...
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