Colson looptail lawn ornament

kingsting · Aug 3, 2017

So I bought this...

To get this...

The bike was $20 and I've seen those little badges sell for more than that and I kind of wanted one for a while. Didn't need the bike but i figured it might look good in one of my flower beds...

Hmmmm. I have this left over, now what?

kingsting · Aug 3, 2017

I started looking it over and noticed everything was really solid and not beat up. I liked the peaked fenders with the way cool stripes. The frame was an interesting design too. It was plenty rusty but not pitted at all. More like that great barn find patina... It was growing on me fast and then I remembered I had this awful thing...

My first attempt at a rat bike. A 1933 or so Sams-Co, DP Harris, Snyder, Rollfast something or other. It was ok but kind of clumsy in appearance and didn't ride all that well. It was a nice cache of ready-to-use parts though. Hmmm....

Well, let's strip the Colson down and see if any surprises await...

With a little PB Blaster, everything came right apart!

Looks like it was originally red...

kingsting · Aug 3, 2017

With the frame stripped of everything and the ugly red Rollfast supplying most of the parts, I was good to go. I did want to do a few other upgrades. Let's see what's in the parts bins...

I wanted a three piece crank and had this bottom bracket adapter sitting around doing nothing.

I like truss rods and had these. Not sure what they are off of...

These wheels came from an old Head mountain bike with a very stuck seatpost that ended up in the scrap pile. Those aluminum rims should polish up nicely.

Tried these Nashbar Wah-Wah pedals out on a buildoff bike but they just didn't look right. I think they'll be good here...

The fork was a little tweaked so out come the expensive tools! Looks good now...

These Campy cranks were from last year's buildoff bike (Earl Grey) but never looked right on it. They should work with this one and the offset should be correct to work with my chainguard.