Okay...this is officially my first cruiser build, and it's been a long-term thing. Back in the summer of '06, I picked up a neat old bike at a yard sale for $3. It'd been painted with gloppy green housepaint, but it was just somehow cool:
I took it home, put air in the tires and they held, so I rode it around...and darned if it didn't actually ride nice! When I started scraping off some of the paint, I found the headtube sticker, and found out it's a Vista, and here's the serial number I uncovered:
But by now I'm pretty sure I don't want to use a banana seat...I'd rather have just a basic cruiser seat. I've also gone from liking the ape-hangers that it came with...to wanting beach cruiser bars...back to wanting the ape-hangers.
There are some neat bits on this bike, like the stem and the chainwheel:
before:
after:
And a cool Stingray-like chain guard:
So, basically, I stripped it down and made a pile of parts:
And stripped off the paint with some Bix stripper...I found a thick brushed-on layer of green, over a thicker layer of red primer, over the factory yellow. Here's the frame after the stripping. In the background, you can see the back of my '79 Yamaha 650, and the front of my mid-1980's Cannondale MTB -- which was my first (minor) bicycle project.
So, having no idea what I was doing, I started sanding off the remains of the paint. I used 80 and 100 grit sandpaper, and then sandpaper wheels on my Dremel tool, and it took forever and was tons of work...
And then, 11/5/06, the day before my twins were born, as it turns out...I wiped down the frame and primed it!
Oh man, was I ever proud of my work! I then let the bike sit in my garage...and everything that touched it rubbed the primer off. It simply didn't stick. Maybe I needed to use self-etching primer or something...but I said "wrappin' frappin' varmint" (or something like it :roll: ) and proceeded to sand the primer back OFF the frame again.
That was in mid 2007. Since then I've polished up and stripped the wheels and chainguard -- I hung 'em on the wall over my workbench, actually. Right now, I'm planning to use whatever's reasonably presentable...but I'll have to buy a seat post and seat, springer fork, tires/tubes, chain, pedals, fenders and painting stuff...enough to keep this on the back burner as we raise four kids and I start attending graduate school.
I'm thinking of a charcoal grey, with white head-tube and some scallops down the top and downtubes. Then, fenders, the apehangers and a springy cruiser seat, with whitewalls. I'd love to hear what anyone has to say.
Here's the Vista Cruiser as she sits now, same pic as in my Intro topic...
I took it home, put air in the tires and they held, so I rode it around...and darned if it didn't actually ride nice! When I started scraping off some of the paint, I found the headtube sticker, and found out it's a Vista, and here's the serial number I uncovered:
But by now I'm pretty sure I don't want to use a banana seat...I'd rather have just a basic cruiser seat. I've also gone from liking the ape-hangers that it came with...to wanting beach cruiser bars...back to wanting the ape-hangers.
There are some neat bits on this bike, like the stem and the chainwheel:
before:
after:
And a cool Stingray-like chain guard:
So, basically, I stripped it down and made a pile of parts:
And stripped off the paint with some Bix stripper...I found a thick brushed-on layer of green, over a thicker layer of red primer, over the factory yellow. Here's the frame after the stripping. In the background, you can see the back of my '79 Yamaha 650, and the front of my mid-1980's Cannondale MTB -- which was my first (minor) bicycle project.
So, having no idea what I was doing, I started sanding off the remains of the paint. I used 80 and 100 grit sandpaper, and then sandpaper wheels on my Dremel tool, and it took forever and was tons of work...
And then, 11/5/06, the day before my twins were born, as it turns out...I wiped down the frame and primed it!
Oh man, was I ever proud of my work! I then let the bike sit in my garage...and everything that touched it rubbed the primer off. It simply didn't stick. Maybe I needed to use self-etching primer or something...but I said "wrappin' frappin' varmint" (or something like it :roll: ) and proceeded to sand the primer back OFF the frame again.
That was in mid 2007. Since then I've polished up and stripped the wheels and chainguard -- I hung 'em on the wall over my workbench, actually. Right now, I'm planning to use whatever's reasonably presentable...but I'll have to buy a seat post and seat, springer fork, tires/tubes, chain, pedals, fenders and painting stuff...enough to keep this on the back burner as we raise four kids and I start attending graduate school.
I'm thinking of a charcoal grey, with white head-tube and some scallops down the top and downtubes. Then, fenders, the apehangers and a springy cruiser seat, with whitewalls. I'd love to hear what anyone has to say.
Here's the Vista Cruiser as she sits now, same pic as in my Intro topic...
