Time for some actual build updates!
On Monday, I took
Stirrup off the pegboard rack and put it on my work stand. Right away, I spotted something that I either didn't notice before or had completely forgotten about. Turns out, the left seat stay is bent inward a little bit. I'll want to bust out some string and make sure the rear triangle isn't misaligned now that I know it's like that.
Next, I snapped a photo of the serial number, and just now looked it up with
this guide. Looks like this Western Flyer was built in 1966. Cool!
I checked the condition of the fork race by cleaning it with with a brass wire brush and some #0000 steel wool. Thankfully, the race is in good condition! I can use it as-is!
I wanted to test and see if I could clean up the paint and a bit of the surface rust using rubbing compound. While it didn't do anything to the rust, it did shine up the paint a little. The left seat stay has been treated with rubbing compound, while the right one has not.
After that test, I went ahead and applied rubbing compound to the whole frame. I then followed it up with some SC Johnson paste wax to seal in the shine. Got to say, after spending a little time shining up the lovely teal paint on this bike, I'm feeling a lot more motivated to get this bike rolling again!
Speaking of getting this bike rolling again, the last thing I did on Monday was assess the bearing cups and search for replacement bearings. One headset bearing cup was fine, but the other had some wear on it, so I dug around for a replacement. Fortunately, I think I found a few. Granted, some have an indentation on the mounting surface that the original didn't have, and some of these are a bit iffy on the condition, but I know I have at least 1 replacement here that'll work. If not, I have a few Murray bikes I can rob parts off of if need be.
I also found some replacement headset bearings too. Some of these may be too far gone, but I've got plenty here that'll work just fine. I just need to some them in some Simple Green in my ultrasonic cleaner, and I'll be in business!
Yesterday, I tackled the bottom bracket hardware. I didn't take any before photos, sorry, but I did find good replacements for the bottom bracket races. I cleaned them up with a brass wire wheel on my dad's grinder, along with the original hardware and the threads on the crank.