Well, it's slow going, as I don't have a huge amount of spare time, but I'm chipping away at cleaning up and overhauling that Witcomb track bike I shared a few weeks ago. It's pretty remarkable how well it's cleaning up. It seems there was just a fine layer of filth over a bike in otherwise great shape.
I stripped all the parts off the frame, and gave it a good washing, first with diluted Dawn dish soap. For the more stubborn bits of grunge, I used Simple Green, and in a few spots, a bit of denatured alcohol. I had to be very sparing with the latter, or it would take up paint. For the chromed parts of the rear triangle and front fork, I used Quick Glo, which works really well for cleaning up chrome and making it shine. You can see the results below.
Before:
After:
I've also cleaned up most of the components, and have unlaced the wheels, since I won't be using the original sewup rims. The front rim had a nasty dent in it, so it had to be replaced for sure, and since I was going to have to re-lace at least once wheel, I figured I'd swap out to clincher rims. Clincher tires are just easier to deal with, and less expensive too.
Before:
After:
One odd thing I discovered is the bar tape was originally blue, and appears to have been two different shades of blue. I never would have guessed this from what it looked like on the bike, but as I stripped it off the original colors were revealed.
There were a few paint chips, and rather than try to find a good match, I decided to just cover the bare steel with clear nail polish. I'll be waxing the frame with Meguiar's carnauba wax, and then the next step is to start putting it all back together again. I need to lace up the wheels of course, using the original hubs, new spokes, and a set of Mavic MA-2 rims a friend is sending me. One oddity is that the bike has 32 spokes in the front, 36 in the rear. Most bikes of this era had the same number of spokes in both wheels, but the British did things a bit differently sometimes. It does make sense, as the rear wheel sees more stress than the front.
Stay tuned for more updates as things progress.
Photo album, with new additions:
No comments:
Post a Comment