hi all, newbie here; Manton & Smith I finished last summer, have put a ton of miles on it so far with no problems at all except some rear hub tweaking.
Started with a beat-up frame my bro gave me in '95 I think, it hung on my various apartment walls for years until I worked up the mojo to tackle it.
The chain stays were badly crushed on both sides from repeated kick stand over tightenings
but some metal work got that area patched pretty nicely, the cross-brace/lower fender mount was attended to after this pic was taken.
Frame was twisted on almost every axis, took a lot of jigging to get it straight; the seat stays are still not totally evenly centred, but it it is straight and rides perfectly without any crabbing.
Here after blasting, lots of JB Weld slathered on
Bought a set of pre-war drop centre rims with ND hubs; the rims were quite rusty so I went repro, bead blasted and powder coated semi-gloss black. The hubs had lots of rust so I bead blasted them, cleaned them up on my poor mans lathe (drill in the vice with a long bolt as a mandrel) until they were good enough for a baked-on Rustoleum black finish, this to emulate "war time" black-out chrome. Brake arm is NOS war-time production. Saw-blade sprocket also blasted & painted. Swapped out the skip tooth sprocket on the rear hub for a regular one. NOS bearings and disc set, all parts zinc plated with a home Eastwood kit and buffed.
And the finished product, powder coated RAL 7003 Moss Grey, good match for RLM 02 (Luftwaffe aircraft interior colour & early war exterior camo colour). Crank is rechromed from a Monark, but I have since sourced an orig M&S unit that will eventually go in. Headset pieced together from rusty crap, again de-rusted, poor man lathed, zinc plated & buffed (except the top nut, that was rechromed). Torrington neck, also rechromed, started with the rustiest pos I've ever seen that had been rattle-canned silver... NOS headbadge from eBay, took some very small stainless machine screws that had tall heads on them, then filed the heads down until the slots were gone; then gave them a bit of a round over and used those instead of rivets. Lock-tighted the nuts inside the head tube after suitably shortening the screws. Used a set of Schwinn forks from a '61 Hollywood I rebuilt 20 years ago and swapped a front brake set onto, suitably neck shortened:
Left the welds as they were (although the one at the top of the seat stays had to be touched-up) as this seems to be a Manton & Smith trademark feature....
It's a blast to ride, although the 48 tooth front sprocket takes a bit of muscle compared to the 46 tooth Schwinns I'm used to, and the pre-war frame geometry took a while to adapt to...it's literally painful.
cheers
greg v.
Started with a beat-up frame my bro gave me in '95 I think, it hung on my various apartment walls for years until I worked up the mojo to tackle it.
The chain stays were badly crushed on both sides from repeated kick stand over tightenings
but some metal work got that area patched pretty nicely, the cross-brace/lower fender mount was attended to after this pic was taken.
Frame was twisted on almost every axis, took a lot of jigging to get it straight; the seat stays are still not totally evenly centred, but it it is straight and rides perfectly without any crabbing.
Here after blasting, lots of JB Weld slathered on
Bought a set of pre-war drop centre rims with ND hubs; the rims were quite rusty so I went repro, bead blasted and powder coated semi-gloss black. The hubs had lots of rust so I bead blasted them, cleaned them up on my poor mans lathe (drill in the vice with a long bolt as a mandrel) until they were good enough for a baked-on Rustoleum black finish, this to emulate "war time" black-out chrome. Brake arm is NOS war-time production. Saw-blade sprocket also blasted & painted. Swapped out the skip tooth sprocket on the rear hub for a regular one. NOS bearings and disc set, all parts zinc plated with a home Eastwood kit and buffed.
And the finished product, powder coated RAL 7003 Moss Grey, good match for RLM 02 (Luftwaffe aircraft interior colour & early war exterior camo colour). Crank is rechromed from a Monark, but I have since sourced an orig M&S unit that will eventually go in. Headset pieced together from rusty crap, again de-rusted, poor man lathed, zinc plated & buffed (except the top nut, that was rechromed). Torrington neck, also rechromed, started with the rustiest pos I've ever seen that had been rattle-canned silver... NOS headbadge from eBay, took some very small stainless machine screws that had tall heads on them, then filed the heads down until the slots were gone; then gave them a bit of a round over and used those instead of rivets. Lock-tighted the nuts inside the head tube after suitably shortening the screws. Used a set of Schwinn forks from a '61 Hollywood I rebuilt 20 years ago and swapped a front brake set onto, suitably neck shortened:
Left the welds as they were (although the one at the top of the seat stays had to be touched-up) as this seems to be a Manton & Smith trademark feature....
It's a blast to ride, although the 48 tooth front sprocket takes a bit of muscle compared to the 46 tooth Schwinns I'm used to, and the pre-war frame geometry took a while to adapt to...it's literally painful.
cheers
greg v.
