El Chiggins!

[GuitarlCarl]

I've got the skirt g's stripped and all I have left to strip is a bit of the green on the inside of the seat and chain stays, then there's that awesome ugly rear fender. It's a love hate thang! It's cool enough, any other two colors and I'd leave it. But I hate green and the orange is only on one side... bye bye crusty. Oh yeah, anybody else ever strip one of these repo monark forks? Yeah there's bondo in them. That's why they don't suggest using them on a powered build. So I'll be stripping it too and I'll bet it's gonna need some metal filler welded in... Last note; How am I stripping this stuff? Pretty easy. Hit it with a plumbers torch until it's discolored and starting to blister. Then hit it with a wire wheel on my cordless drill. Easy Peasy. Mostly doesn't even need sanded! I think I'll be clear coating the whole thing, more on that later.

Guitarl.

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Two months to go. Right?

Carl.

 

[kingfish254]

Just catching up on this build. The way you left the seattubes unattached at the top is pretty cool. Makes you look twice at it. Cool build brother!

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Just catching up on this build. The way you left the seattubes unattached at the top is pretty cool. Makes you look twice at it. Cool build brother!

Thanks brother! I hope I can get a close up of it. The Higgins front half has two little holes where the chain stays were that are such a cool little detail, I had to leave them open. Then the clean curve of the Elgin seat tube had to be preserved, so it's one of those times where the build dictated what it was going to look like!

Carl.

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Rain rolled thru and it's still 80 degrees in the garage at 11 pm at night! But I have the fender stripped and I started on the bumper assembly (Oh yeah. You all haven't seen that bit yet...) Hehe!

Carl.

 

[Jake Sensi]

Sweet looking bike. GTB!! Peace

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Just got back from a shakedown run. Waffles are shot but the bike is a roller. I stole the rear rim from my Harlequin. Gonna lace a new one for it. I usually don't match rims and tires but here they look good to me.

Sent from the edge of an alternate universe...

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Parts List:
1938 Elgin stepthru with all her guards and rear rack
1947 JC Higgins curved 2 bar
Evans sweetheart chainring
26 x 2.125 lowrider 72 spoke rims
Kenda redwall bricks
Electra grips
unknown stem and seagull bars
unknown chrome landing gear fork
repop Monark springer fork and hardware
vintage Mesinger ladies springer seat

Carl.

 

[OddJob]

This might be my favorite of all your builds, Carl. The bare metal with the splashes of color, the 'double parallelogram', the stretched but not super-stretched design; .

 

[GuitarlCarl]

It's getting bare...
But tough to work on cuz in my shop I'm applying stain and polyurethane to some cabinets so paint dust and particles are a hazard. Plenty of time, tho I'd like to slap the guy who house painted John Deere green over the peach...

Sent from the edge of an alternate universe...

 

[OddJob]

It's getting bare...
But tough to work on cuz in my shop I'm applying stain and polyurethane to some cabinets so paint dust and particles are a hazard. Plenty of time, tho I'd like to slap the guy who house painted John Deere green over the peach...

Sent from the edge of an alternate universe...

And when you say 'slap the guy who painted the John Deere paint over' you're hitting pretty close to home, relatively speaking!

Only about 150 miles or so from you to the JD HQ right?

Keep the stripping to the bike parts; nobody likes "bare" cupboards....

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Yep. No bare cupboards, got the resized cabinet mounted today. Still need to touch up the paint underneath it with some satin white but that's at the clients home not here. I've got my shop back but tomorrow I'm cleaning and restringing a 64 string hammered dulcimer at the music store so there's always a "What am I doing today?" thing going on too. Plus I'm trying to figure out how to mount a Nerf gun on a bike. But that's a different build thread...
Back to stripping...

Carl.

Sent from the edge of an alternate universe...

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Got it bare. Then I scrounged up an old bracket to get the rack supports to angle up with the seat tubes and fork tubes.

Carl.

Sent from the edge of an alternate universe...

 

[SkyknightJohn]

Lookin’ good!

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Lookin’ good!

Thanks! The only bit I'm not too excited about are the grips. They're clashing with the seat and the seat is staying so... I'm still searching for grips.

Carl.

 

[kingfish254]

Great looking build! It keeps getting better and better!

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Found a set of old gold grips and changed the bars.
Then I took some daylight pics.

Carl.

Sent from the edge of an alternate universe...

 

[GuitarlCarl]

Started in on the subtle brass Doo-daddery from my stash of ancient brass tacks.

Sent from the edge of an alternate universe...

 

[sdframe]

I love it as is, but keep wondering about the possibility of two tanks, one horizontal, one vertical. Then again, . . . maybe not. Very cool build.

 

[toro1978]

The bike looks awesome and outwordly. That filigree rack and fender and all that double piping (frame and fork) and these radially spoked wheels go so well together. Like somewhere between classic, steampunk and sci-fi... The rack + fender combo quite reminds me of Giger. I like it a lot in this paint(less) condition. It makes it look very industrial, like it's ridden tens of thousands of miles.