This bike was my first klunker and has been a fun ride for the last few years.
I wanted to give it a new style and decided to go with a late '50s early '60s kustom boulevard cruiser theme. But I wanted it to look like it was built in the late '50s and has been sitting in the garage for the last few decades.
I decided to do white accents with the white glitter grab rail seat, pedals, grips, Shelby chain guard and new 2.4" whitewall tires. Here's an early mock-up.
I decided to use some crusty old white S2 rims and wanted some extra gears to help out with the hills in my neighborhood so I undertook my first real wheel build to add a cool Sturmey Archer drum brake hub. I've never gone through the whole process of measuring, ordering spokes, lacing and truing before so this was pretty fun.
To shift the gears I added a derailleur and stem shifter from an old 10 speed. I mounted the shifter to the seat stay under the saddle for a jockey shift arrangement that worked out great.
I bobbed a rear fender from a Huffy for the back. Stripped that and parts of the chain guard to bare metal to accent the chrome on the tank.
And added a cool chopper headlight
Polished up the head badge a bit and rubbed the old paint and primer down with WD40.
The chain ring looked too new to me so I gave it a skip tooth conversion by grinding off every other tooth. Then I gave it some RaT-ina for an aged aesthetic.
The whitewalls were new and looked it so I toned them down with some paint and wood stain. It's a great bike, looks great rides great and I'm pretty happy with it!