'81 Le Tour Tourist – The Talisman update 6/09

[SpokeAndTruth]

Well here's my entry.
This is my first time to try to really restore a frame and give it new life. I'm not sure exactly what I want to do to it (seeing everyone's theme names is pretty intimidating) but I imagine my effort will be pretty simple.

I bought this frame off CraigsList from a guy who had intended to turn it into a fixed gear bike. He decided he didn't have time for it but only after he chopped off the cable stops and pulled off the headbadge.

I'm looking forward to putting this together and seeing how it turns out. Pics below of the frame when I bought it.

 

[OctopusHook]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

Nice donor frame there. It's already been abused and is primed to be brought back to life and made your own. Good luck, have fun!

 

[kingfish254]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

Welcome to RRB and BO8
Good luck

 

[erichitscar]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

A fixed gear rat rod would be sweet.... just sayin'

 

[SpokeAndTruth]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

Hi all. Thanks for the encouragement and welcomes.

OctopusHook, on your build thread you said "just forget about it being a competition." I'm such a n00b I didn't know it WAS a competition. Now I won't be able to get that outta my head. : )

by erichitscar on Wed May 08, 2013 9:47 am
A fixed gear rat rod would be sweet.... just sayin'

So I was thinking of doing a fixie but that would mean having to buy rims. I've got a 26" rim with a 3speed hub on it laying around here unless of course I could convince the wife (read: get her drunk enough) to let me get these!!

I love these rims. Mostly because it has my middle name on them. :mrgreen:

 

[OctopusHook]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

OctopusHook, on your build thread you said "just forget about it being a competition." I'm such a n00b I didn't know it WAS a competition. Now I won't be able to get that outta my head. : )

(Face palm) Sorry man. Didn't mean to turn the pressure up. Well, on the other hand, I do my best work under pressure so, don't forget....
EVERYONE IS WATCHING! :shock:

 

[SpokeAndTruth]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

My internet took a crap on me here at the house so I'm attempting to update using my phone. This is surprisingly hard.

So I didnt really get to do much today toward the build except scrub some paint off one my parts.  Here's a pic of the parts I have.

The one that kinda stood out for me when looking at the pic was the quill stem. I hadn't looked at my plastic bag of parts in months and forgot I had it. Beer clink for scoring a part I knew I wanted and didn't know I already had.

I thought I'd get my steel brush on my angle grinder and scrape off the paint. It doesn't polish up like chrome even when i used the buffer on my dremmel. It looks and feels like aluminum. Depending on how I do the rims and other things like the seat post and brake levers, I might keep it the brushed aluminum or maybe paint it back to black. Here it is after.

So there were a couple of other cool things I found in my bag of parts. One was the chrome fork crown. Whether I'll use it or not I don't know but it's pretty cool to know I have it.

The other thing that I thought was a REALLY cool find was the keyed seatpost nut and bolt WHICH... has a little "S" for Schwinn!

One reason this such a cool find is I noticed on the frame that the seatpoat clamp required a keyed bolt and i thought "there is no way I'll find something to fit this."

Lucky me huh.

 

[rat-a-tac]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

More of a competition with yourself. How killer of a bike can you build for yourself and if in the process you learn from others or get ideas to improve your design then all the better!

Bend it, break it, paint it, grind it, just don't break the rules.

Welcome and have fun!

 

[erichitscar]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

Hi all. Thanks for the encouragement and welcomes.

OctopusHook, on your build thread you said "just forget about it being a competition." I'm such a n00b I didn't know it WAS a competition. Now I won't be able to get that outta my head. : )

by erichitscar on Wed May 08, 2013 9:47 am
A fixed gear rat rod would be sweet.... just sayin'

So I was thinking of doing a fixie but that would mean having to buy rims. I've got a 26" rim with a 3speed hub on it laying around here unless of course I could convince the wife (read: get her drunk enough) to let me get these!!

I love these rims. Mostly because it has my middle name on them. :mrgreen:

Those are sweet!!!

 

[SpokeAndTruth]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

So I was able to put in a little time since I last updated my build. I was able to grind off the paint on my Le Tour Tourist. Of course it was after a few hours of doing this and a few days later that I find on the forum that apparently you make this job a lot easier by using some aviation paint stripper.

I guess that's a rookie mistake and a good example of how cruising through the forum can help you learn things about restoring bikes.

So without paint stripper, which I guess kinda softens the paint or something, this took a long time. Being bent over my frame like that had me feeling my age and I found myself hunched over in the same position for several seconds whenever I'd take a break every few minutes.

So here are a few pics.

Slowly making progress. After I stripped all the paint off I went into the garage and used some rattle can primer to keep any rust from forming. Unfortunately I didn't get any pics of it after I did that. It's pretty rough so I'm gonna get some steel wool, sand it down some and spray another coat of primer. Lots of work but this is pretty fun. Really enjoying watching everyone else's progress, too.

 

[Von Stans]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

Did you have to pick any wire out of your legs after striping the bike with the wire cup???
I remember the first time I used one and was wearing shorts it took me an hour to pull the wire out of my legs.....

I am enjoying your build can't wait to see how it turns out.......

 

[SpokeAndTruth]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

@Von Stans Ha ha ha! Another rookie mistake! I didn't have to pick any of the wire out of my leg but I did get pinged four or five times pretty good. So I didn't get hit with too many but the few that did... hit me hard enough to be a reminder to wear pants!

 

[SpokeAndTruth]

Re: '81 LeTour Tourist – no theme (update 5/16)

Long time no update huh. I feel like I'm going a lot slower than a lot of the other bike builders. We do have till end of August right? : )

So check about this!!
I had to be out of the office this morning to file some paperwork for a client but luckily for me, I was able to arrange a CraigsList transaction to happen at the same time. The guy I was buying from worked near where I needed to be.

So what'd I get?
I got some used Schwalbe Delta Cruisers!

They do have some miles on them but the tread doesn't look too bad. The guy said he put about 500 miles on them but after talking with him for about 10 or 15 minutes I could tell this guy — he rides. A lot. I'm sure he easily put twice that on these things.

Still... 30 bucks for the pair. I thought I got a pretty sweet deal even with number of miles I think he put on them. They still have pretty good tread.

And I picked these up last night off of Amazon.
Ok, I know we're strongly encouraged NOT to discuss the definition of what a ratrod is but it seems like these pedals might not exactly be in the spirit of ratrodding. And although new to this Im kinda thinking they aren't. But I really LIKE these pedals!

I've been wanting a set of these for a while and this build is the perfect bike to put them on. I've got a road bike with SPD pedals that I've had for years. I really like them a lot and I've been wishing I had them on my rusty, beat up old cruiser but that would look stupid.
With the Delta Cruisers and my thoughts to try and put a 3-speed hub on this bike I'm starting to get the idea of it being a town sport or racer type bike. So dual purpose SPD/deck pedals I think are perfect.

The pic above isn't of the actual pair but the same model. Brand new, they go for about 70 or 80 bucks so paying 40 bucks with free shipping... beer bottle clink for the win!

Unfortunately, my bill is beginning to add up for this build and I really wanted to keep it as inexpensive as possible. I'm pretty close to having gathered all the parts but I really would like a new crankset (the one i have is pretty ugly) and now I need some rims to fit the new tires. All i have are 26 inchers laying around. I don't have any 700c's. Well I still have three and a half months so maybe something cheap will fall in my lap.

 

[dragnusa]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

These pedals have a very mechanical look to them Id use them on a rat rod build

 

[pacman270]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme

great choice in frame.

 

[SpokeAndTruth]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme update 5/21

So in a previous update on my build thread I showed some pics of me scraping the paint off my frame with my angle grinder.

I eventually got it done and hit it with some primer. The only thing is I kept thinking about the remnants of the cable stops that the previous owner of this frame left and I couldn't take it anymore so I decided to take them all the way off. Yes, even after I had already primed the frame.

I asked my neighbor who used to be welding instructor if he thought I could use my little MAPP torch to try and melt the brazing off of it. He said I should be able to. Then I asked if it was possible it might make the frame a little brittle or weaker in that spot with me putting heat on it. He said "you did only spend 30 bucks on it right?"

Not really what I wanted to hear but I went ahead and tried to melt it off anyway. It didn't work. All I managed to do was make a scorch mark on the frame.
See?

So I busted out my angle grinder with the cutting disk and carefully tried to shave that little piece off. It was amazing how well that thing worked.

Here's what it looked like after I got done.

To get it just right, I pulled out my files and smoothed it down nice and smooth.
Not bad, huh.

Hopefully the frame doesn't break in this spot once I'm done and riding down the road. I'm gonna sand it again and put some more primer on it. Then I'll do the paint.

 

[outskirtscustoms]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme update 5/21

Cool frame, I had a complete one last summer but in coppertone instead of blue. Rode great but a bit tall for a short guy like me.

 

[SpokeAndTruth]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme update 5/21

I'm pretty short too Outskirts. Shorter than most guys coming in at a towering 5'3".
As I've compiled parts I'm worried about this build in that I may like it too much to get rid of it but too short to ride comfortably. I think it's a 54cm frame. I need to measure it again when i get home.

 

[OctopusHook]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme update 5/21

Anytime you see those little round divots on a piece of steel that is joined to another piece of steel, that's a spot weld.
The easiest way to remove something like that is to drill out the divots with a bit that is slightly larger than the diameter of the divot. Just drill through the part that you want to remove then use a chisel or flat screwdriver and hammer to pry the part off. If it's not budging don't force it too much just redrill with a little bigger bit and try again. Then just clean it up with a sanding disk or a file.
This method has a lot less risk of damaging the part that you want to save. You could also use this method If you wanted to remove the welded on part to reattach it some place else. Once it's removed, fully drill through the part in the same locations you drilled to remove it, then place it in the new location and just weld through those holes filling them in. Grind down the welds and it'll look nice and neat and stock.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spot_welding

It's looking good, keep it up!

 

[SpokeAndTruth]

Re: '81 Le Tour Tourist – no theme update 5/22

OctopusHook, thanks for the tip on how to identify welds. That will definitely come in handy with future builds.

So after filing the frame and and going over it with some coarse steel wool, I took out my rattle can of white primer and got to spraying again. Not much of an update tonight but I was able to make another baby step.

This isn't the greatest pic in the world and I'm a bit embarrassed for people to see how junked up my garage is but clearing that out is a whole other project to be taken up at a later date. For now I've got BO8 to do!

The tape and newspaper at the bottom of the forks is there for the chrome. I decided to go ahead and keep the chrome. If you've been following my build, one of my first pics shows the chrome piece that goes over the crown. I think I'm gonna go ahead and use that so I left the bottom of the forks chrome as well.