"Make hay while the sun shines" is an old farmer colloquialism meaning 'take advantage of the nice weather'. Up here in the north country, getting the crops in during the Fall harvest season can be a bit dicey. You want it dry, avoiding the early Fall rains, and not covered in snow, which can happen all of a sudden and as early as mid October. It definitely applies to building bikes in a non-air tight, but mostly enclosed shed.
Sunday was a gorgeous day, and since I won't be doing any painting on my Skinny build, I was able to dedicate it to adding parts that I have procured from my stash and ordered last week at the bike shop since my idea for a build sprouted a couple weeks ago. The headset in the previous post was from parts I had in my top drawer in my tool box. Whenever I find a bike cheap or free I pick it up and strip it of these 'old bike' specific parts, like 1" headsets of which there are at least 3 different configurations that I have found.
I want my 50 SS ( 50, Skinny and Single) build to be an updated and revamped version of a 1971 Schwinn Racer, one they might have built if they could have forseen the future and the craze of urban single speeds. So that means some of the old parts need to be modernized. I wanted to use a 3 piece crank, like I did on Silver King Unchained, because they allow for more crank and chain ring choices, as well as run really smoothly. This Sunlite conversion kit is inexpensive, available, and easy to install.
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I popped out the old original cups in the Racer, and used my rubber mallet that has a large head to tap in the new ones. For the finishing taps, it helps when the diameter of the mallet head is bigger than the BB cup.
A little grease on the inside of the BB tube never hurt either.
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Part of my inspiration for building this came earlier in September when my long time mtb racing buddy and friend, Joe, came into the bike shop one day with a large blue Rubbermaid tub in his hands. He told me he was cleaning out his garage and found some stuff I might be interested in for my vintage bike hobby. Inside were some mtb parts from the late '80s / early '90s, some vintage pedals from earlier years, various nuts and bolts and attachments that are often hard to find, etc. The small stuff was in a Shimano shoe box from a pair of shoes he had purchased from me at my first bike shop back in 1990 when we were all switching over to clipless shoes and pedals! Pretty cool.
As I perused through the tub, I found this crankset, where the 3 original rings had been removed, and a 40t ring put in place, loosely held on by the crank bolts. Ding! The bells and whistles went off in my head! Someone had already thought of a single speed conversion years before, and left it for me to finish the thought! I modified some washers to fit the spider, and bolted it together and mounted it to my new BB.
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