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Ulu

Stinky Old Fish
Pro Member
Joined
Apr 20, 2022
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The Sunny SanJoaquin
Ok, the creative vision has cleared just enough for a skinnybike build. I don’t know why these things always happen in the middle of the night.

I will base it on the ‘60s Wayfarer Flyer and the 90’s Centurion Accordo.

(More photographs and descriptions of these in the fresh finds category…)

15D4AE8E-A5EF-4BB1-8F7D-6DE607B53C2B.jpeg


FC7B62E2-6AAA-46CA-B218-8BA6AC14372C.jpeg


The vision here involves a gender-bending, lowered, stretchbike, with a raked skinny girder.

But the vision is still not clear. I haven’t laid out anything yet, and all I’ve done is start stripping, and play with wheels.

Of course I first have to file out the forks with the Dremel grinder, and spread the drops with a threaded rod.
FB73C292-F6F7-4779-B28C-596F92BB7DD8.jpeg


The centurion was disassembled when I bought it, and I only got the frame set and crankset with derailers. The Wayfarer was 100% complete.
78668565-4055-4646-AAF6-E7E7B4BECC5F.jpeg

This bike had not seen a drop of oil or grease in 25 years and the tires were 100% rotten. Fortunately, it had been stored indoors most of its life and it’s not too rusty.

In fact, the old Wayfarer came apart rather easily, considering its age and state of decrepitude. Two exceptions were the drive side crank cotter, and drive side bearing cup.

The other cottter came out with a few taps from a punch, but the drive side was seized tight. I didn’t want to bend it and so I gave it two cycles of heat, with the torch, then compressed air and a cup of ice, to break the joint loose.

Even after that, the Volkswagen ball joint breaker was not able to move the pin.
BF741CA3-698D-44A2-991A-EAD8CF9F266F.jpeg

I was successful by using this Whitworth ball joint press for old English cars. (50 years ago I owned an MG midget that I hopped up and ripped around. Every part of it that I touched was SAE so I never did buy any Whitworth tools.)
288C67EE-5694-4947-BF9F-8DF115C43EDF.jpeg

I used this to drive the cottter down into a nut. That 15 mm socket is six point, and slightly loose on the Whitworth screw.
B2D48280-4C12-4A88-8B8C-1F892F226A46.jpeg


But it all worked out & there are the cotters, beautifully undamaged.
F14E9830-6B53-43B8-A38E-100FAFDC7A25.jpeg

This stuff is filthy but it never got ridden much. It’s all perfectly usable but not show quality.

I had purchased this threaded bottom set last week because it says BSA on it. I’m crossing my fingers it will fit.
268E25ED-A3E0-406B-BB48-8CD622F3BCAB.jpeg


I don’t know yet because the drive side bearing cup is still seized in the bottom bracket. I hit it with the torch and then some ice Saturday night, and I will do it again today. The second time it will most likely break loose without trouble.

The first heat cycle causes things to expand and contract, and breaks down the rusty interface a little bit. The second heat cycle actually causes things to move around a few thousands of an inch, and that’s usually enough that you can break free from that point. Anyhow my goal is not to beat on anything.

There’s the wayfarer with the alloy wheels, Skinny Schwinn seat and inverted bars
1FC851AA-73CB-4866-B2C4-60F3260885F1.jpeg

These alloy 559er wheels weigh 6 1/2 pounds less per set then the wayfarer steel wheels. That’s with brand new tires on the alloy wheels and completely worn out tires on the steel wheels.
 
Ok, the creative vision has cleared just enough for a skinnybike build. I don’t know why these things always happen in the middle of the night.

I will base it on the ‘60s Wayfarer Flyer and the 90’s Centurion Accordo.

(More photographs and descriptions of these in the fresh finds category…)

View attachment 211608

View attachment 211614

The vision here involves a gender-bending, lowered, stretchbike, with a raked skinny girder.

But the vision is still not clear. I haven’t laid out anything yet, and all I’ve done is start stripping, and play with wheels.

Of course I first have to file out the forks with the Dremel grinder, and spread the drops with a threaded rod.
View attachment 211610

The centurion was disassembled when I bought it, and I only got the frame set and crankset with derailers. The Wayfarer was 100% complete.
View attachment 211620
This bike had not seen a drop of oil or grease in 25 years and the tires were 100% rotten. Fortunately, it had been stored indoors most of its life and it’s not too rusty.

In fact, the old Wayfarer came apart rather easily, considering its age and state of decrepitude. Two exceptions were the drive side crank cotter, and drive side bearing cup.

The other cottter came out with a few taps from a punch, but the drive side was seized tight. I didn’t want to bend it and so I gave it two cycles of heat, with the torch, then compressed air and a cup of ice, to break the joint loose.

Even after that, the Volkswagen ball joint breaker was not able to move the pin.
View attachment 211621
I was successful by using this Whitworth ball joint press for old English cars. (50 years ago I owned an MG midget that I hopped up and ripped around. Every part of it that I touched was SAE so I never did buy any Whitworth tools.)
View attachment 211611
I used this to drive the cottter down into a nut. That 15 mm socket is six point, and slightly loose on the Whitworth screw.
View attachment 211612

But it all worked out & there are the cotters, beautifully undamaged.
View attachment 211613
This stuff is filthy but it never got ridden much. It’s all perfectly usable but not show quality.

I had purchased this threaded bottom set last week because it says BSA on it. I’m crossing my fingers it will fit.
View attachment 211622

I don’t know yet because the drive side bearing cup is still seized in the bottom bracket. I hit it with the torch and then some ice Saturday night, and I will do it again today. The second time it will most likely break loose without trouble.

The first heat cycle causes things to expand and contract, and breaks down the rusty interface a little bit. The second heat cycle actually causes things to move around a few thousands of an inch, and that’s usually enough that you can break free from that point. Anyhow my goal is not to beat on anything.

There’s the wayfarer with the alloy wheels, Skinny Schwinn seat and inverted bars
View attachment 211609
These alloy 559er wheels weigh 6 1/2 pounds less per set then the wayfarer steel wheels. That’s with brand new tires on the alloy wheels and completely worn out tires on the steel wheels.
Most likely not BSA is British standard. Your frame is 26 tpi pain in the behind
 
Most likely not BSA is British standard. Your frame is 26 tpi pain in the behind
Velo orange sell a kit but cost more than the bike. If you have the ability rethread the bottom bracket.
 
Phooie! I thought BSA, Phillips & Raleigh were all going to be kissing cousins there.

Oh well, I have the bottom bracket from the Accordo, But the vision just got a little fuzzier.

I actually bought that Sunlite sealed unit for my wife’s bike. She doesn’t know, & I won’t tell her I tried to use it on this one.

EDIT: is not the bicycle BSA the same as The Birmingham Small Arms co?

It’s driving me nuts why those threads wouldn’t be the same. The Phillips built bike must pre-date this British standardization.
 
Last edited:
BSA wanted to standardize but Raleigh loved have proprietary parts so said no (Microsoft of bikes) so the bringham bikes all went the same and Raleigh kept there's and bought everyone out.
 
Thank you. I find it a little crazy but then a lot of crazy things went on in industry. For instance I find it crazy that Velo shows a English cartridge, French cartridge, and Italian cartridge bottom set, but doesn’t tell you what thread is on any of them.

I might be working on a strange bicycle, which might follow any one of those standards.

The Velo orange parts do not look that expensive when I consider what I spent to build the mongoose bike up. Greediness is telling me that my used bio-pace set is going to wear out someday and I’m going to want a Grand Cru crankset.

But this bike is going to get built as much as possible from parts I already have on hand, because I seem to have a lot of leftovers from projects that didn’t quite come off as expected.
 
Yeah mine clearly has the plastic Oiler on the bottom bracket. This came in handy when I was heating it with a torch because I knew that if I didn’t melt the plastic, the brass would be fine.
 
I don’t know yet because the drive side bearing cup is still seized in the bottom bracket. I hit it with the torch and then some ice Saturday night, and I will do it again today. The second time it will most likely break loose without trouble.
This is a tool I have that is specifically designed to remove English drive side cups. You could probably make something like this without too much trouble. They can be a real booger to bust loose.

20221003_090712.jpg
 
That looks pretty easy to make, thank you.

Unfortunately the thrust surfaces are not substantial at all, But it just might work.

I was going to just drill two holes in it and make a spanner. I don’t have carbide so I’ll probably have to sharpen a bit about five times.

My other option is to put a handle on it with a TIG welder and grind it off later.

First off, it’s going to get another round with a torch. I will try to enlarge the bottom bracket and then shrink that cup again.

I’m gonna have to put this aside for a while and go fix my garage door. I’ve been putting that off for a long time. It works, but it looks like crap and it’s not sturdy.

If it comes apart on lands on top of my wife’s car I will be in deeeep Doodoo.
 
Two more cycles of heat with the torch and the ice did nothing.

Finally, I made a tool & was successful in removing the bearing race. This was a chunk of ‘64 mustang trailer hitch my dad cut up back in the 70s.

0585775E-BE02-43A6-8D52-59B43AEB4473.jpeg

E9554775-31DE-4244-9B96-56FF1E4FFB1D.jpeg


F88F432B-4B74-402F-9B1B-E17A7F66AD84.jpeg


I knocked this out with a Dremel and a die grinder and a file. It worked great too. One thing I did was make it a press fit, and I had to pull it on tight with the bolt. There was no wiggling at all.

It took a good deal of pressure to remove it. Easily 60 foot pounds. It’s not because it was rusted in. The threads in the frame were boogered up.
 
BTW If you look at the bottom of those chain stays, you can see that they’ve taken quite a bit of abuse too. Yuck.

Also, The threads are indeed not BSA threads. Wrong pitch.

I will use the BB of the the Centurion frame.
 
I cleaned up the threads in the bottom bracket, and looks like this whole assembly will work fine if I just service it and put it back together.

Now I have to decide if it’s a really cool deal to have Cottered cranks on this bike.
 
Cottered cranks definitely have some cool factor as they have fallen out of popular use. Where a lot of people go wrong with them is they must be pressed in and out rather than hammered. They are soft metal that deforms to the bore for the correct fit. I even mark them side to side to get the best fit when reassembling them. Good quality replacement cotters are getting hard to find.
 
Looks like you are going to have some fun with this one, @Ulu !

sKinNy oN~!
 
I wish my Accordo had that nicer fork that yours has. I have the uni-fork (ugly).
 
This should be a cool mix. Good luck.
 
Thank you all for the kind comments.
. . . they must be pressed in and out rather than hammered. . . . Good quality replacement cotters are getting hard to find.
I assumed that might be the case and so I was as careful as I could be taking them apart. I’m sure I can press them back in with the British ball joint press.

When it comes to the cottered crank, I guess I will have to decide if I’m building a show bike, or if I’m going to build a bike I will actually ride after the show.

It does have a certain antique charm.

Either way, at some point I’m going to cut this frame up and splice it out.
 

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