When last I left you, my erstwhile readers, I had obtained a Schwinn Le Tour III mixte to build up so my brother could give it to his wife on her birthday at the end of April. While I'm not as far along as I would like to be I have made progress and should be able to get it completed on time. First the little minx made it into the rack for inspection and deconstruction
.
And I ended up with this
And this
And then the packages started to arrive, first came the nice new 27 inch allow wheels, to go with some fat 27 x 1 3/8" Kenda K40s I already had in stock.
And lots of cool bits for the cockpit, new pedals, basket etc.
I have also made use of a handy little item that my buddy Hugh, at
Hugh's bicycle blog, turned me on to. The ultrasonic -cleaner. This little helper (below)
Turns dirty, grimy, nasty stuff like this..
Into nice clean shiny stuff like this - I didn't even notice the first time I saw the derailleur that it had a Le Tour badge, now that its clean it really stands out.
So now its time to finish the cleaning and lubing parts. Checking the new hoops for spin and true,and adding grease to the hubs as the wheels from the factory are usually miserly with the lube. Then on to building this baby back up and ready for the road.
Normally I am pretty conservative with my rebuilds, I make sure that I have at least a little profit after donor bike and parts costs, but I am going off course with the LeTour III. I am going to blow way past the $250 my brother had slated for this project, but that's ok as I went overboard in large part for myself to build a really sharp mixte. Big bro will get a deal, my Sister-in-law will get a bike she will hopefully have fun riding and I get to create a cool ride. Until next time.
Ride. Smile. Repeat.
