I am at a point where I am fairly comfortable with this 1959 Schwinn Traveler three speed.
I ultimately went with a really nice, chrome-molybdenum seat post, which was nicer than the Wald one I previously had on the bike.
Otherwise, I think the build-up of this bike went fairly well. The parts are all pretty good, and the painted areas of the bike cleaned up nicely.
The wheels required some truing after the first couple of rides, but are settling in pretty well. I built up these wheels last winter from 1950s parts: Torrington spokes, Schwinn S6 rims, and period hubs. There's always a "break in" period with wheels. After a handful of rides, I end up truing them again (sometimes truing them a couple of times), before they finally "settle".
I originally learned to build wheels quite a number of years ago, thinking it would only be marginally useful on the rare occasion I needed to fix or true a wheel. I never thought I'd be building many sets of wheels. It's a winter hobby: I locate vintage parts for fairly cheap prices, then I build up wheels I think will be useful, or different from what I already have. When I have a project needing wheels, I have sets ready to go (usually). A good set of wheels revive an old bike, and can tailor a bike to your needs.
One other thing I notice is just how solid these old Schwinns are for descents. The weight, frame angles, and the fact that these bikes soak up bumps well make descents a lot of fun. True, they're slower up the hills than a Raleigh or anything of that sort, but heading down hill, they're rock solid and comfortable. When I am riding one, I never feel like I'm being bounced all over or that the bike is wandering as it picks up speed.
I'm sure in January, when it's 25 (-4 for the celsius people) and windy out, I'll look back at these pictures and wish it was September again...
Love seeing the bike in its natural habitat. Those MKS pedals look the part, too.
ReplyDeleteI learned to true wheels from reading Sheldon Brown. I've become pretty efficient at it, too. I've managed to delay making the jump into wheel building or rebuilding, though. Considering the rear wheel on the DL-1, I was contemplating cleaning it assembled, or pulling it apart for the job. I ended up de-lacing it, in large part to force myself to face building it back up. I have a couple of identical sets of MTB wheels I want to swap hubs between (different colors), and a dynohub and rim that need to come together. I'm fairly confident that I'll get the process figured out. Actually, selecting the proper spoke length for the last wheel mentioned is the part that sounds scariest to me. I'm looking forward to adding wheel building to my own skill set this year.
The MKS 3000S is a great, rebuildable pedal with traditional rubber blocks. The 9/16 spindle version is well-known, but there is also a lesser-seen 1/2 spindle version. I buy the 1/2 version whenever I see them available at a reasonable price because they're harder to find.
DeleteBuilding wheels is a useful skill. It allows you to tailor the bike to your ride style. I learned to build from Sheldon Brown's website and by copying wheels I had on-hand. The big things are getting the correct spoke length, and getting the rim into the roughly correct position while also drawing the spokes to tension evenly around the rim. The draw-up has to be more or less uniform all the way around, or your initial rim position will be way off. Other than that, it's a series of little tasks done uniformly that makes a good wheel.
There's a way to "cheat" at doing a basic rim swap where you tape the new rim to the old in a matching position, loosen the spokes on the old wheel, and then transfer spokes and nipples across the tape to the new rim going around the rim. This is a kind of half-way method between a simple true-up and a total rebuild of a wheel. Hub swaps are harder and require a tear-down and new build.