Project POS
Good afternoon Ladies and Gentleman. My name is Chad Smith and I am from Knoxville, TN. I just joined the board about a month ago after taking interest back in my childhood passion of playing with bikes.
Anyways...let's move on to the bike build.
I found a 1960s AMF Roadmaster Skyrider. I came across it in a barn after looking at a collection an elderly lady had of old bicycles that her deceased husband had restored. She had some really nice bikes, but I was and still am broke and couldn't afford anything she had restored. She was a real cool lady so I asked if her husband had anything laying around, that might be lower priced. She said sure and took me back into a barn where I found 10 or so girls bikes and 2 boys bikes. The bicycle I purchased from her was marked with a tag(something you would see stuck on like at yardsale) "AMF Skyrider 1965 $75.00." I asked to buy it she priced it. I was happy and we move forward. And now you know the meaning behind the project's name.
When I bought the bike, it had crappy Japanese seat, missing headlight, worn logos, flat dry rotten tires and tubes, Taiwan gold grips and various other crap that just made it cool.
Pics of the bike shortly after I purchased it.
As you can see, I had my LBS Greenlee's Bicycle Shop put some 26x1.75 white walls with tubes on it just to assess how and what kind of shape the bicycle was in. David and Doc, at Greenlee's loved the old piece, and it had really started to grow on me as well. It rode pretty decent but I was torn at the time on what to do with it. Should I completely restore it? Or should I just resto rat bike it? Or should i just rat it all the way? I knew the bike wasn't worth much nor would it ever be worth much so I decided to build a resto rat bike out of it. Mix new with the vintage and retain that veteran look but get it looking half way respectable and most importantly road worthy.
After the tires, I realized that the old spokes were beat and out of true and the crank was bent. What to do next? Until next time....
Good afternoon Ladies and Gentleman. My name is Chad Smith and I am from Knoxville, TN. I just joined the board about a month ago after taking interest back in my childhood passion of playing with bikes.
Anyways...let's move on to the bike build.
I found a 1960s AMF Roadmaster Skyrider. I came across it in a barn after looking at a collection an elderly lady had of old bicycles that her deceased husband had restored. She had some really nice bikes, but I was and still am broke and couldn't afford anything she had restored. She was a real cool lady so I asked if her husband had anything laying around, that might be lower priced. She said sure and took me back into a barn where I found 10 or so girls bikes and 2 boys bikes. The bicycle I purchased from her was marked with a tag(something you would see stuck on like at yardsale) "AMF Skyrider 1965 $75.00." I asked to buy it she priced it. I was happy and we move forward. And now you know the meaning behind the project's name.
When I bought the bike, it had crappy Japanese seat, missing headlight, worn logos, flat dry rotten tires and tubes, Taiwan gold grips and various other crap that just made it cool.
Pics of the bike shortly after I purchased it.
As you can see, I had my LBS Greenlee's Bicycle Shop put some 26x1.75 white walls with tubes on it just to assess how and what kind of shape the bicycle was in. David and Doc, at Greenlee's loved the old piece, and it had really started to grow on me as well. It rode pretty decent but I was torn at the time on what to do with it. Should I completely restore it? Or should I just resto rat bike it? Or should i just rat it all the way? I knew the bike wasn't worth much nor would it ever be worth much so I decided to build a resto rat bike out of it. Mix new with the vintage and retain that veteran look but get it looking half way respectable and most importantly road worthy.
After the tires, I realized that the old spokes were beat and out of true and the crank was bent. What to do next? Until next time....
