THE RICKPAULOS COLLECTION

[rickpaulos]

Needs a bit of work.
SE branded seat, one seat rail is popped out of the plastic saddle body. Those are very hard to re-insert.
Welds a bit on the ugh side.
"Cromo Seat Tube", so the rest of the bike is gas pipe?
The tires really do ride nice. So smooth.
KMC K-8A chain, interesting shape.
MSRP $699!

 

[rickpaulos]

picked up 9 bike and a unicycle yesterday.

The most interesting bike (to me) was the Motiv MonoRail. Early bmx with a single tube frame.
The donors husband worked at a Huffy factory for a year or so. Ponco City, Oklahoma. His boring job was cleaning the paint booths at night. 1 booth each night, over and over. I never knew there was a Huffy factory in Oklahoma.
The donor said she bought all these new for the kids (some 40 years ago?)

One has some identity confusion. The Kent little boys bike. Is it a gun or a race car? Fire power or Pole Position?

The one Huffy has a Schwinn banana seat and Schwinn grips on Wald high rise bars.

All got a brooming to rid much of the barn dirt.

 

[rickpaulos]

The unidentified Huffy.


Decided it is a parts bike.
Wald bars with a '77' on them.
Schwinn branded seat.
Originally white, now rusty yellow. The bright yellow fenders have a layer of pale yellow house paint on them.
forgot to take a photo of the seat post, it's a bit of galvanize plumbing pipe with the threads at the top.


So a white Huffy bike with yellow fenders from the 1977-1978 era.
found this Cactus Flower on ebay, looks very similar.

Found the serial under the layers of paint.

A similar model from a 1977 JC Pennys at Wishbook. Upper right.
Huffy had many similar models.

Wheels don't match. Looks like the rear is not stock.
Bendix RB2 rear hub 36h so that's a keeper.
Step 1 remove the snap ring...

 

[Wayne]

The one thing you know for sure, that "parts bike" got ridden a lot. Oh, if only that bike could talk...

 

[musclebikemadman]

The unidentified Huffy.
View attachment 261781

Decided it is a parts bike.
Wald bars with a '77' on them.
Schwinn branded seat.
Originally white, now rusty yellow. The bright yellow fenders have a layer of pale yellow house paint on them.
forgot to take a photo of the seat post, it's a bit of galvanize plumbing pipe with the threads at the top.


So a white Huffy bike with yellow fenders from the 1977-1978 era.
found this Cactus Flower on ebay, looks very similar.
View attachment 261785

Found the serial under the layers of paint.

View attachment 261782




A similar model from a 1977 JC Pennys at Wishbook. Upper right.
Huffy had many similar models.

View attachment 261784

Wheels don't match. Looks like the rear is not stock.
Bendix RB2 rear hub 36h so that's a keeper.
Step 1 remove the snap ring...
View attachment 261780

That is a Schwinn Scrambler seat and sissy bar, what does the rim look like on it? Is it a 36 hole Schwinn S-2?

 

[rickpaulos]

I took the red SE Cycles Lager single speed bike apart today.

frame & fork weight 9 pounds. That's heavy for what claims to be a good bike.
heavier than expected wheels.
Really poor spokes. black & rusty.
bb trashed.
several of the hex cap bolts were buggered. Had to hammer the hex wrenches in to get a grip.
seat cut apart and metal rails tossed in the recycle bin.
I'll be changing to flat bars so the fixie bars will go to the local coop.
pedals weren't in tight but no visible thread damage.

Decals in fair condition. Some peeling up around the edges.
Scores of chips in the paint. Most are rather rusty so my guess is the bike has been sitting out for a couple of years since the abuse ended.
Bubbles of rust in the paint around the vent holes.
Cleaned with 409 then some 800 wet sanding on the fork to get the worst bits cleaned up. Not looking very good. Wet 800 should bring out a shine but this is looking sanded and flat. Maybe a clear coat will help.
An off color. More like a lipstick red. I may send the fork with the wife to go fingernail paint shopping.
I've been wanting a real copper plated bike, this just isn't a good enough bike to justify that expense.
New powder coat would be too much as well.

At a msrp of $695 this bike was way over priced. More like a $395 bike.

 

[rickpaulos]

Not a Schwinn rim. Looks like an older ballooner rim. I did not check the tire sizes. They were so rotted, surely unreadable. 3 different type of spokes so it had been repaired before. The Bendix RB2 predates the probable 1977/1978 date of the bike. I don't know when the RB2 was introduced and I assume it was supersceded by the Bendix 76 in 1976.

The seat has a number of rat or mice chew holes in it. part of living in a barn I guess. The vinyl is kinda punky. One big tear under the edge about 2 inches long.

All of these cheap bikes have a bit if rust. Hanging in an unheated barn with a dirt floor for 20 to 45 years didn't do them any good.

 

[rickpaulos]

Today's full load.

1955 Schwinn Spitfire resto mod. repaint, Sugino Maxy bmx crank on a sealed 1 piece bb, Rear caliper brake adapter, bmx bars, front canti's on a 1980s Schwinn mtb fork. Alloy wheels. Single freewheel. Shrink wrapped aluminum seat post.

Schwinn Mirada teal. 1988.

Schwinn Sierra. The black chrome version. 1987. This is about the best condition of any of the black chrome Schwinn's I've ever seen. A thin lacquer on chrome scratches very easily.

Schwinn mtb. Repaint. Not sure what the model is. 1987. Schwinn had a separate mountain bike catalog that year . Any one got one?

Trek 1000. 1987. Looks to be 100% stock, even the tires. Very nice condition. Ridden on Ragbrai XXII in 1994. 60ct x 57tt. About the 3rd year for the bonded aluminum frames. (the first year mostly failed, then Trek figured it out)

Schwinn Exerciser DX 900 in white. Never seen one in white before. The led display even works but is a bit slow. Probably needs new batteries which aren't easy to get to. Has some extra mtb bar ends. More places to hang clothes.

This is quite rare. 1970 Schwinn Exerciser in green. I'd guess 95% of all Schwinn exercisers were gold or coppertone so any other color is a relief. The local coop has few exerciser seats so one of those will go in it. The speedo head is seized. I disconnected the cable to prevent any more damage before head surgery.

 

[rickpaulos]

and parts.
Bendix 2 speed with cable shift in very good condition.

handlebars
cranks
racks
etc

 

[MattiThundrrr]

Wow, some really good stuff there. That Spitfire is my favorite, but all 3 of those Schwinns look really good, looks like they didn't skimp out on the builds. Some really nice bars in the heap too, the bullmoose look like they have some decent chrome, have you checked them for a brand mark on the stem? Also, that gold cruiser bar looks pretty, and I always like a slingshot stem. Great haul!

 

[One-eyed Sailor]

That's wild!
Schwinn catalogs

 

[One-eyed Sailor]

That Spitfire is ...

 

[JaxRhapsody]

It's probably Hi-Ten steel. Most of those cheapo Fixie/ss bikes are, like Pure Fix and State. I'm not saying 600 is cheap, but by the eyes of the companies and the hardcores[BikeForum users], it is. When it comes to these bikes, that's about low/mid. The pricer bikes tend to use better steel, like Reventon and Engine 11.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

That black one could be another Sierra or High Sierra. Could be a Mesa or Mesa Grande. You'd hafta check the numbers since it was most likely repainted. Schwinns labels weren't sticker back then, they're painted on.

 

[rickpaulos]

The more I work on this red SE Cycles Lager single speed bike, the worse my impression of it gets.

Those WTB Thick Slick tires are 650 grams each. That's very heavy. Like cheap walmart knobby mountain bike tire heavy.
The wheels are very heavy. The black spokes are overly tight and rusting. Should be replaced but not for this bike. I've said white tires are the worst, well black spokes are the worst. The mystery meat day at the school cafeteria. You never know what is under the covering and it's rarely good.

Rear brake mount is too high. A standard shorty brake caliper won't reach.
Parts getting changed. Bars, stem, seat, brake levers, brake calipers. cables.

I took the single freewheel off for service. Surprisingly it came off rather easily. This bike was not "Ridden hard and put away wet", more like abused and neglected starting on the drawing board, then the factory and finally the previous owners.

Here is one of the rear hub cones. The hub had 3/16" balls and one lock nut wasn't tight so the cone turned in and got too tight and destroyed the cones. When I pulled the wheel off I could not turn the axle by hand. Typical of walmart bikes designed to wear out in 500 miles.

 

[MattiThundrrr]

Sad. SE Bijes sell a ton of bikes to a lot of kids for a bunch of money. I hope everything isn't built to this standard. Thickslicks are also very popular, perhaps the weight is actually by design, thick is right in the name. Maybe it's a durability thing for urban riding

 

[JA331]

The thick slicks have a thick inner layer to prevent punctures. I have them on two 29” bikes and wouldn’t say they are heavy for the type of tire they are. In comparison a duro 26” cruiser tire is close to 1kg or even more. The thickslicks handle and roll great too.

 

[rickpaulos]

rebuild done.

27.9 pounds
new chain. Upped the freewheel from an 18t to 19t.

rides downwind fine. The 20-30 gusts are a problem going into the wind. A couple of miles and I'm not going to miss it.

 

[rickpaulos]

needs a pair of the special hubs. The rest is regular bike parts. I noticed the sprocket is on the left side too.
One issue is one of the rear axles is missing the left hand threaded inboard nut and someone decided to weld the axle to the bearing.
Hubs run about $20 each.

 

[rickpaulos]

scraped this Kmart All Pro out today.

wrong size wheels. 26 instead of 26. You can see the brakes won't reach.
bent fork
looks like the front wheel was filled with spray foam. Why not, look at all those spray foam auto repair jobs on youtube from Mechanical Nightmares or Just Rolled in.

Cool 1 piece brake lever grips from Yoshikawa Japan.