1985 Schwinn Ladies Mesa Runner -Reborn

Make: Schwinn
Model: Mesa Runner
Year:  1985
Obtained: Aug 2009
Found: Someones Yard
Paid: The sign said FREE....

This is a throw back post.  I was going through some photos and came across a bike Project that I had not yet posted.  A number of years ago when I was; A) still a speed play using-lycra wearing-Aluminum frame riding-roadie and B) still married, I was out for a nice summer ride when I broke my chain.  I didn't have the right tools for a fix so I was clip clopping home in my roadie shoes when I came across an 80's vintage mountain bike in someones front yard with a free sign on it.

Free - "as is"

And I think to myself hmm...it appears rideable and since its free I could ride it home and ghost ride the road bike...and with home only about a mile away I figure I can pull it off.  I take off my roadie shoes and use their velcro straps to tie them onto the rear rack and then set off pedaling in my stocking feet.  I could see the chain and freewheel  were pretty rusty so I expected the gravelly sound they made but I hadn't anticipated the ghost shifting which made life interesting on the short slightly uphill ride home.

El Rusto Primo

After getting safely home I did a bit of research and realized I had a 1985 Schwinn Mesa Runner, I knew it was an '85 as that was the only year of the two year run where they made a ladies version.  It had a few issues, the chain and FW as mentioned were rusty, and the shifters weren't exactly show quality.

seen better days

Some of the chrome wasn't in the best nick either.

And it also had cantilever brakes which I have never been the best at adjusting.

I realized my wife (now Ex) had a milestone birthday coming up and this might be a nice present, with a bit of TLC that is.  This project was unique in a lot of ways, its the only ladies mountain bike I have rebuilt and its the only the second bike where I have ever repainted the frame (the first was an old Azuki).  At this point in time I hadn't done much refurbing of bikes so I didn't really have a parts bin, nor was I as well acquainted with bike parts on the internet as I am now.  I did, however, have a Motiv Mt. bike (Costco purchase) laying around not getting any use that I could cannibalize.

not really motiv-ating

I bought the Motiv in late 1999 when I was just getting back into biking and didn't really know any better.  The irony is that at the time my (then) father in law offered an old Hybrid he had mouldering away in his basement.  Unfortunately  I lacked the; knowledge, skills and interest then to tackle a rebuilding project so I bought a cheap Costco bike instead.  Face palm.  Anyway it ended up being a great source of parts for bringing the Mesa Runner back to life.  The first thing I replaced was the rear derailleur.

I also took the combo brake and shift levers to go with V-Brakes which I also stole from the Motiv.

And as you can see I also though slick tires would be a good choice for some reason, well they were more practical for city riding than the knobbies at any rate. And I did splurge on some new parts like some swanky new pedals, a major improvement over the POS "resin" pedals it had before.

And what I discovered later was my most important purchase, a wicker front basket.

It was with this rebuild that I discovered that Ladies love the basket, when I presented the bike to her the very first thing she said was "oh I love the basket", not "Wow you did a lot of work", or "is that even the same bike!".... LOL.  So now when I build a ladies bike I always try to put a basket on it.

My paint philosophy with the 10 speeds I refurbish is to leave it original and use a 3 step wax process to get it in the best shape possible.  If the purchaser wants new paint I leave that to them but once you replace the original paint job you can't go back.  With this bike I decided on painting the frame because A) the paint wasn't in very good shape B) the bike is not a "collectable" and C) I had a vision for this project of a blue frame.  I was fortunate that on the day I was at the hardware store to get the spray paint for this project I had my, then 6 year old, daughter along as my advisor.  I had a steel blue in mind but when I picked it up my little fashionista piped up with "no daddy, not that one" so I asked her what blue she thought mom would like and that is what went on the bike, and of course her mom loved it.

Although the marriage didn't last things are good,  I live 3 blocks away, we get along better now than when married and she still has the bike and takes it  for rides with our daughter so I think this project ended up being worthwhile.  You may have noticed that in addition to cleaning up nicely I was able to the rear rack leveled (OCD) I think it makes things look much nicer.

Until next time. Ride.Smile.Repeat.

Schwinn Le Tour III putting it all together (out of order)

I already posted shots of the finished Le Tour II mxte project so here I am back tracking a bit to talk about how it all went together starting from the stripped down frame and (mostly) cleaned up components.

First I needed to get the fork taken care of.  I had used one of my spiffy new tools (Nashbar crown race puller) to get the crown race off so I could clean it.

Then I needed to clean up some rust on the chromed fork blades so they would be nice and shiny again.  Some Turtle was chrome cleaner/rust remover and brass brush wheel on the Dremel tool did the job.

Then it was on to using more cool tools (Nashbar crown race setter and headset press) to remount the crown race on the fork and get the cleaned up cups back on the head tube.

With the frame-set taken care of it was on to the wheels.  The wheel-set that came on this bike was just fine and I will certainly reuse it but since this project was financed by my brother for his wife I went with some brand new 27 inch wheels from Amazon.  They are relatively inexpensive (under $70 for the set) and; they are lighter, have a better braking surface and nicer spokes and hubs than the originals.  The drawback to the factory wheels is that both front and rear came too tight and needed to be adjusted and IMHO they don't use enough grease in the bearings so I took care of that too.  Not a huge deal if you are willing do to a bit of extra work and have the proper cone wrenches handy.

factory amount

Ryan amount

In getting the bike back together I encountered three issues.  I had purchased "thumbies" from Velo-Orange so I could mount the shifter's on the handlebar to make them easier to reach.

I got them all set up only to find that due to an issue with how the shifter hardware interfaced with the thumbies I couldn't get the front derailleur shifter to work properly -it basically loosened itself every time I shifted.

In the diagram below, part 3533 has a "shaft" that all the shifter parts fit around, Velo-Orange very kindly provides an extra long shaft to use with the thumbies, except that the shifter "guts" would not fit around the VO part as it was just slightly too big and using the stock part, meant for a stem shifter mount, the shaft was too short to fit all of the washers that go at the end (3526, 3527, 3528).  Where is Goldie Locks when you need her? I speculate the lack of a key washer is what allowed the front derailleur shifter to keep loosening.

So I had to scrap that and go with the original stem mount system (below).  Thank goodness for keeping and cleaning all the original parts!

I also mounted the basket (a key piece of the build) only to find it hung down low enough to interfere with the front tire.  Luckily I happened to have a Dia Compe mini rack I had intended for a later build that mounts to center pull brakes and that solved the basket issue.  I did have to add an extra washer to keep the rack "tang" from getting hung up on the headset and interfering with steerage.

Finally I was ready for the last piece of the build adding on the cork grips.  I was lucky I had two pairs of grips because I destroyed one set in getting the #$%^* things mounted!  I read somewhere you are supposed to glue them on but I had no luck getting them mounted until I greased them up and I still ended up with a small crack near the front of the left grip because they were so tough to rotate onto the bar.  I do like the look, especially shellacked but boy they were a pain in the rear.  (Note its possible that the cork grips are meant for a 22.2 diameter bars rather than the 23.8mm bars I used but I checked the packaging and it did not specify.)

One thing I really liked about this build is how much detail they put into this bike, almost all of the components had either a Le Tour marking or said "Schwinn Approved".  Even the seat post has a Le Tour marking that you would never see!

It really made me appreciate the level of detail they put into these Japanese Schwinn's.

As always -ride.smile.repeat.

Schwinn Le Tour III -Finished

Its done, she loved it, more later when I am not so darn tired

finished product in new home

Blue, Bell, Basket

Spiffed up crank

Final stages

Schwinn Le Tour III Mixte Rescue update

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.

Ryan's Rebuilds to the Rescue

One of my older brothers also lives in the greater Seattle metro area and most weeks we are able to get together before work at a downtown Seattle coffee shop.  Recently he revealed to me a pickle he found himself in.  In cleaning out his garage he had decided to put an old bike into a garage sale, it was an Nishiki Hybrid bike that he had used in a sprint triathlon but it was functional and nothing special .  Anyway not long after the garage sale his wife asked him what had happened to her bike.....seems she considered the Nishiki her bike and my brother, at first speechless, had to confess that he sold it not realizing it was her bike.  Doh!  So knowing his little brother is a bike geek and that his wife's birthday was approaching at the end of April, he came to me with a request that I find a bike to replace the one he had sold.

His criteria was that it would  be a step through (women's bike), which the Nishiki was not, and that it had to be blue.  He also wanted to keep the budget in the $250 range.  I told him I thought I could help him out and envisioned a split top tube classic European Mixte, perhaps a Peugeot or Motobecane, to fit the bill.  Today I decided to visit my favorite haunt for bike projects, Bike Works, to search out a donor for this project and I found not exactly what I had in my own mind but a bike that fit the bill none the less.  It's a nice  late 70s or early 80s Schwinn Le Tour III Mixte frame in need of some TLC.  No split top tube but a very nice Japanese built lugged frame with Le Tour branded SunTour parts, and the blue paint seems to be in good shape for its age.  It's certainly NOT a 40 pound, hernia inducing, Chicago built Varsity.

1978 Catalog

I have some nice swept back city bars and brake levers to match  from Velo Orange put aside for just such a project and I think the SunTour components will clean up nicely.

Since I only had to shell out $40 for this little gem I might also be able to upgrade the Steel wheels to some new Alloy 27 inchers and maybe add a faux leather sprung saddle.  And for sure it needs a nice basket up front.

I am hoping this will turn out to be a sweet Mixte if I do my job right and certainly it will be a upgrade over the Nishiki that was a garage sale casualty.  Should be a fun build for my sister in-law, and a face saver for my brother- More to come.

Ride.Smile.Repeat.

Mid 70's Schwinn Varisty (June 2011)

Make: Schwinn

Model: Varsity

Year:  1975ish

Obtained: Late 2009

Found: Via Craigslist

Paid: $25

The first bike boom Ten Speed I rebuilt was, appropriately enough, a mid 70's Chicago built Schwinn Varsity in "Sky Blue".  My best guess is that it's a 1977 model based on the color choice.  As I recall I bought this bike in 2009 for about $25 off Craigslist and it came with a dissembled rear brake and no tires or tubes.  Unfortunately I don't have any "before" pictures but the frame decals were in such bad shape that they were unreadable so I used a plastic scraper to take them off the frame. 

This bike basically sat around for two years which in retrospect was a good idea because in the meantime I built a single speed out of a neglected Azuki 10 speed and also built up a newer Schwinn Fastback frame-set with a modern Campagnolo Veloce 10 speed gruppo, and both projects taught me a lot.  Its been awhile since I did this rebuild and I don't recall the full process I put it through but here is what I remember.

Schwinn is the only bike boom era company I know of that used the one piece "Ashtabula" crank-set on an adult bike.  Usually this technology is only found on kids bikes and it contributes to the hefty 36+ pound weight of the Varsity. Its actually pretty easy to work on and really only requires a steady hand, a hammer and a large slotted screw driver.  If I were to work on another Varsity I would follow the lead of my friend Hugh over at Hugh's bike blog and convert this boat anchor of a crank to a more traditional  three piece set up.

In the case of any rebuild I replace as a matter of course; tires, tubes, rim strips, chain, cables/housing, brake pads, bar tape and all grease.  And then anything else as needed.

The biggest issues, beyond the standard replacements, I had with this particular rebuild were:
A) the rear brake supplied with the bike didn't have a long enough threaded stud to work with the brake bridge, odd but true.
B) the rear derailleur was kaput
C) a worn out saddle clamp meant any test ride as an adventure and
D) the rear freewheel was worn-out and sounded like a dryer with shot bearings when you got it spinning.

I was able to replace A and B with period correct parts from a local shop, Recycled Cycles, that sells both new and used parts and took care of  C and D new via Amazon.  I wish I had done a better job at the time of taking pictures of the problem parts but here is a shot of the new cassette and rear derailleur.

It's always amazing to me how much new handle bar tape spruces up an old bike.  Here is a shot of the updated cockpit of the Varsity:

Having been through a number of builds since doing this one I am not sure I would be totally satisfied with the final product today but at the time I thought it turned out all right.

The thrill I got from doing this rebuild was the lady who bought the bike was probably in her early 40s and after test riding she came back with a big grin on her face and said "that was like being 13 again!".  That was all the incentive I needed to keep looking for old 10 speeds to resurrect.

Ride.Smile.Repeat.