American PatriRat - part II

expjawa · Jul 31, 2011

OK, here is my finished '61 Schwinn American. Since the bike was already blue & white, I added some red and played up on the name "American". Without further preamble...

herr_rudolf · Jul 31, 2011

drool...
Glad you didn't put a new coat of paint over it. It shows that american made products last and last...
Great job.

scott brownsey · Jul 31, 2011

ya for the USA cool build goodluck :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

expjawa · Jul 31, 2011

Original build thread is here: http://www.ratrodbikes.com/forum/viewto ... 55&t=39861
Well, I wound up replacing the stem with an alloy road stem (the one on it was too small for the steer tube anyway) and the handlebars with a set of Velo Orange "Belleville" bars. I originally had an arched flat bar on it, but this one is more the shape I originally envisioned. The red anodize finish is actually a Duplicolor paint called Metalcast. Red Innova tyres on a new set of alloy wheels with a single-speed Shimano hub, painted white. The grips are NOS Schwinn grips for a Stingray. They didn't fit on easily - the bars are slightly larger than standard at about .910" in diameter. I needed to soak the grips in hot, soapy water to coax them on. I suspect they'll never come off again without cutting them.

The tail light is a Cateye LED lamp, bolted onto the original reflector hole in the fender. I made a little shroud for it to fair it in. The shroud slides off for switching the light on/off. The false-tank is light model airplane plywood I bought at a hobby shop. I cut out 3 of them originally, then decided to use the second two as "wings" mounted to the rear triangles. I was thinking about doing a tail fin on the rear fender, but decided against drilling any new holes in it. The plywood pieces have 4 coats of urethane on them to the smooth them out, then are painted in the Rustoleum. Also, thanks to axsepul for cutting out the star circle decals for me - I wasn't about to try to paint them.

I guess the last detail in the bullet-style headlamp. That's an LED unit as well - I wanted to make sure that I had good, highly visible lights on this thing because I do ride it a lot. In fact, I'd planned on doing more with it, but found I was riding it too much to have time to work on it much. So far, I've probably put over 100 miles on it, mostly on local rail & canal paths. So much so, that I've got to take apart the coast brake hub and clean the dirt/stone dust out of it. I even bought a coordinated Nutcase helmet to go with it. It helps that it was on clearance at REI...

So anyway, that's my American PatriRat. Hope you like it.