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Frame is an AMF Avenger, guard is the Aero-bee style. Perhaps an exclusive short-run design for a hardware store in Texas. Rad. -Geoff

Wheels built, I have pics and will endeavor to post them tomorrow. I decided to keep the stickers on the rims, at least for now. They sit opposite of the logos on the tires, so they sort of chase each other as the wheels spin. Built the wheels 2-cross since the flanges are so tall. And yes...

Okay, there it is.

Parts are here to build the wheels. Alienation Deviant hoops (super light and there's a warning sticker that says "for front use only", um, whatever), Sturmey drums, and Tioga (1.85 Powerband & 2.10 Powerblock) tires. For spokes I'm going to be cutting down some NOS Union spokes, the old dull...

I've had decent luck with the modern alloy Sturmey drums. I run them on the full size cruisers and they stop nicely. Plus I have some backstock of 1990s era mountain bike oversized brake cables which fill up the cable housing a bit better and lend a firmer feel to the lever, especially on long...

Okay, there we go.

Let's see if I've got the picture thing figured out. This should be a pic of the bike just home from the swap meet.

I'll get pics up once I get my Photobucket figured out again. If you google 'AMF avenger 5' you'll find the very same bike pictured a few years back on the CABE. Picked up an all-original '69 AMF Avenger 5 at this year's Iron Ranch swap meet. All there but a bit rough around the edges, still a...

Thanks for all the kudos on this bike. For the time being I'm using it as my neighborhood get-around bike. This one has been sort of the "proof of concept" bike. Makes me want to do another one with much cleaner parts and then have paint done properly in two (or three) tone green. But at the...

This bike started out as a middleweight Schwinn Kingsize American. Taller than the standard Schwinn cantilever frames by a couple inches. It came to me with the horrible purple repaint and little else. I've turned it into a heavyweight with some early post-war flair. Cut the rear fender stay...

I recently started sourcing free packing paper from the local newspaper. They have free "end rolls" of blank paper, the rolls are about 4 feet tall and have anywhere from 20 - 80 feet of paper left on them. Not enough to be useful for printing newspapers, but perfect for packing bike boxes...

I've only had a few problems with seating tires. My method for inflation is to lay the tire flat on the ground, like a pizza. Lots of people stand the wheels on edge and then inflate the tire, and this might contribute to the low spot thing. Just spitballing. Cheers, Geoff

Park Tools makes (or at least used to make) a tool for seating tires. It's essentially a pair of channel locks with special shaped and coated grippers on the end. You grip the low spot and pull it up into place. Kinda pricey, but once I got one and used it a few times it just made me wish I'd...

The deal with the "bad" Sturmey coaster hubs is that when the hub is in the "dead spot" between 2nd and 3rd, it will freewheel forward as well as backwards. When adjusted correctly these hubs work okay. To be on the safe side, use a front brake as a back-up. Or just make sure your shifter and...

I had a run of the 7/8" / 47/64" Bendix size cone wrenches made a year or two back. I've improved the design a bit and am thinking about making another run of them. You can get by with off-sized tools, but if you're going to be fixing a lot of Bendix hubs, it's so nice to have the right tools...

Soak with Liquid Wrench of PB Blaster. Let it sit overnight. Have you tried a cheater bar on your wrench? Leverage is king. Either you'll break your wrench or remove the pedal. Cheers, Geoff

That's a great score. The Stik-Shifter with the overload tube is going to be a somewhat pricey thing to come up with. But it shouldn't be too much to get an old derailleur, a longer proper chain, and a basic friction thumb shifter installed. Get all the bearings greased up, throw some fresh...

If lubing the hub doesn't work you can always loosen the cone adjustment slightly. The drive side cone is set up to only turn in quarter-turn increments, it has a special washer that locks it into place. The non-drive side cone is sometimes set up to turn quarter-turn, sometimes it's set up...

I had one of these mostly apart for a friend, but don't have extensive experience with them. Test drive it in a bike stand to fine tune the shifter adjustment. If you're installing it in a wheel that's currently a single speed coaster, then you'll have to re-dish the wheel or it will sit...

You can totally get away with running a skinny sprocket with the wider coaster chain. It just doesn't work that well the other way around. And the skinny five speed sprockets are a bit harder to find than the wider coaster versions. Cheers, Geoff