Two new finds: Trek BMX and '51 Schwinn

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So apparently the bicycle gods have been with me this spring.

A couple months ago, a friend of a friend mentioned that he had this old Trek to get rid of, left in a shed by a previous occupant:
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Said friend retrieved it for me a couple weeks ago, and I've been picking at it. I have rebuilt the front hub and bottom bracket, and replaced the cranks with a slightly nicer set and the pedals with Primo Tenderizers, and I am currently waiting for a set of brake cables to come from Planet BMX.

Also, a coworker who knows I like old bikes retrieved his old childhood Schwinn from his sister's place and asked if I would like it as a project, as he hated to see it just go to scrap:
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He said he had a lot of memories with this bike; he remembers delivering papers on it through all kinds of weather including snow. He also remembers a time in the late '60s or early '70s when the Steelers were doing well so he and his dad went out and spray-bombed it black and gold.

Now, this guy is about 10 years older than me, which would put his year of birth around 1960. The serial number of this thing makes it a 1951, which checks out with some catalog pics I have found of low-end or department-store Schwinns with a skiptooth sweetheart sprocket. This thing had to be around 20 years old already when he got it, figuring he was around 10 at the time. Man, the stories this thing could probably tell...

Dig that medallion strapped to the head tube. Is that a St. Christopher's medal?
 
So apparently the bicycle gods have been with me this spring.

A couple months ago, a friend of a friend mentioned that he had this old Trek to get rid of, left in a shed by a previous occupant:
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Said friend retrieved it for me a couple weeks ago, and I've been picking at it. I have rebuilt the front hub and bottom bracket, and replaced the cranks with a slightly nicer set and the pedals with Primo Tenderizers, and I am currently waiting for a set of brake cables to come from Planet BMX.

Also, a coworker who knows I like old bikes retrieved his old childhood Schwinn from his sister's place and asked if I would like it as a project, as he hated to see it just go to scrap:
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He said he had a lot of memories with this bike; he remembers delivering papers on it through all kinds of weather including snow. He also remembers a time in the late '60s or early '70s when the Steelers were doing well so he and his dad went out and spray-bombed it black and gold.

Now, this guy is about 10 years older than me, which would put his year of birth around 1960. The serial number of this thing makes it a 1951, which checks out with some catalog pics I have found of low-end or department-store Schwinns with a skiptooth sweetheart sprocket. This thing had to be around 20 years old already when he got it, figuring he was around 10 at the time. Man, the stories this thing could probably tell...

Dig that medallion strapped to the head tube. Is that a St. Christopher's medal?
Love that Trek! Nice that it has the original fork and everything. I'm a mid school fool and extra foolish when it comes to any of the Whitewater or Waterloo bikes
 
Love that Trek! Nice that it has the original fork and everything. I'm a mid school fool and extra foolish when it comes to any of the Whitewater or Waterloo bikes
Yeah, the guy who picked it up for me (he's actually my daughter's boyfriend) is big into mid school too; he has a couple of Specialized Fatboy Hemis. This is one he built for my daughter along with his Diamondback Assault:
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He has other Haros too. I gotta get pictures sometime.

He suggested I ditch all the Gyro stuff since I'm never gonna do any kind of tricks on it, just get straight cables and make the brakes work even better; but I decided I like the idea of keeping all the original stuff working.
 
I don’t think the Trek and Specialized BMX bikes ever caught on as much as the companies had hoped. Not that they’re not nice bikes or anything, if anything they were overbuilt tanks, maybe that was the problem. I had an all-chrome Trek that looked brand new, and I think I still have an olive drab Specialized hanging around, probably a 405.
 
I don’t think the Trek and Specialized BMX bikes ever caught on as much as the companies had hoped. Not that they’re not nice bikes or anything, if anything they were overbuilt tanks, maybe that was the problem. I had an all-chrome Trek that looked brand new, and I think I still have an olive drab Specialized hanging around, probably a 405.
growing up in my teens in mid 80's England all anyone who knew anything about bmx knew was GT and Haro, if you had a Performer or a freestyle master peeps be jealous, I had a friend that had wealthy parents and although he was a ruff n tumble type guy he was a straight A student so he got what he wanted what ever he got into so he had a good few bikes, he would let me use his performer decked out with after market stuff, odi mushrooms, skyways, layback seat post, CW bars, MX 2 finger pull anodized brakes, bear trap pedals, coloured tyres, pastel coloured brake cables, clamp on fork pegs, I loved the feel of riding something that was cool and at the time an expensive bike, he moved on to vespa and lambretta scooters and preceded to customize those but that's another story, I think most cyclist no matter what they ride can appreciate a good quality bmx
 

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