My Bikes - New Resto Project

This is my pride and joy. Its a 20-30 year old Schwinn that was bought new for my mothers 16th birthday. she never really rode it, and it was hung in a closet, so its in very good condition.

My recorded top speed is 30.6mph (in florida) because there are no hills to get speed. where i used to live (New Hampshire) i know i have gone between 40-50mph, but i didn't have a speedometer so i'll never know unless i go back.

what usually happens while im riding this bike is ill be going a leisurely 20mph, and then a car pulls out of nowhere. Ill hit my rear brakes, then my front, which causes the back to slide out basically causing me to somehow drift. Its wicked awesome, but always scares the hell out of me.



This is the latest version of my 'prototype' bike. I love to collect dead bikes wherever i can find them and i usually just salvage parts and throw the bad parts away.

-The rims came from completely different bikes (i painted them matte black)
-The peddle arms came of another bike i will show you
-I just bought the metal pedals because they work better
-The little spring also came from the same bike i got the pedal arms.

It is mostly a cruise bike (Its all wet because i just took it out in the rain) but has many advantages in riding over soft dirt or flat off road (because theres no mountains or hills in Florida . Having the weight over the rear tire (due to the small spring) allows for better grip through the sand (also deflating the tire a bit works too). The bigger front wheel allows more weight to be put on the rear and makes the front completely weightless (which is what you want through the sand).

here are the previous versions of this bike.


looked wicked awesome and rode great. A road bike with a mountain bike frame works surprisingly well (no brakes, but all the other versions don't have brakes either)

This version ended when the front tire exploded (literally, well the inner tube i mean)


took stickers off, painted the wheels black. very good off road.

1 day after painting the front wheel, guess what happened, the front tire exploded... again. (Its not because im fat, lol. all the inner tubes are pretty old)




went off roading in a job site next to my house (will be in another picture). It also rained really hard that day


This is the job site, which is now not big at all because it is almost fully developed ( their building a chilis ) and the other bike i was talking about.


And heres a better picture. the black shock is what was originally on my prototype bike. the problem with this bike is that it doesn't work to well on flat land. theres almost no weight on the rear because the over sized shock and the frame was garbage, so i parted it, and threw out the frame.




And heres my garage, which has basically turned into my bike shop. you can see the plentiful amount of rims, and other bikes.

the red mountain bike is my sisters. (I actually found it, but she needed a bike, and this one was in perfect running order)

The other two bikes are waiting to be restored. The bike thats mostly in the shot is the Raleigh bike. very light frame and good rims, but there are so many problems.

The other bike from what i can assume is a 60's bike. Its a sears roebuck bike, with the only identification to what bike it is being 'free spirit'. Its in running condition, but the inner tubes are completely shot.

I hope you have liked reading my post, id love some comments too.

Thats really cool that you found all of those bikes. I runa standard BMX bike... It really is quite fn to drift on purpose, Im sure there are enough hairpins and right-angles with wide walkways to keep ME happy all day
Keep up the craftiness!

Job site=

Sakiale

Job site=

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lol. Its basically almost complete now. they had put down some white dirt a couple days ago and its really compact allowing me to go faster on it than on regular road. So yesterday, i rode around in an oval track like area that would go into the job site, the go back on road, then back on the job site, allowing me to catch some big angles and do some wicked powerslides

Awesome. I can't drift on my bike lol. Well not easily... maybe on dirt, but still not easily. But I never tried it on my mountain bike. But sounds fun!

what i would do is i would be on the small road straight away which would come into the u turn which was half dirt, half road. I'd come in the turn at a big angle, wait to hit that one soft spot or bump then the back would come out and i'd try my best to stabilize it, which usually worked. It also helps to have your inside foot out because the back of my bike swung out to fast for me to notice, so my inner leg acts as a balancer / keeping my bike from sliding all the way out under me.

Hmm...

Sakiale

Hmm...

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you meant on my road bike, lol sorry. I don't know how i do that, its very weird but is also really cool. Ive only done it 2-3 times, all not on purpose. I don't want to have to keep spending money on good tires.

As you see in the last picture, there is a raliegh bike just sitting there, waiting to be restored. Being sunday, i have nothing to do, so i said why not try to get the raliegh bike up and running again.

The first chore of the day was the chain. After some looking, i found the chain was too rusted to even move. Luckily I had a spare chain from what else but my red mountain bike i parted. After some fiddling around, and A LOT of liquid wrench, the chain, rusty gear changers, and gears were working perfectly and it was on to some tires.

Here is where i hesitated. The only bike with a rear rim that could fit was my lovely red road bike. A lot of searching wen't on, and i finally just decided that it would have to be done to get the bike moving. So Just put the rims on right, No. The rear brakes had to be the tightest fit and i barely squeezed the rim between them. (I'm freaking out right now because thats my good rim). Because of my recent stupidity with brakes i had my dad get them into place so i could take a test drive (Again, a'lot of liquid wrench was used because of the rusty cables.

So i took it for a ride and it performed surprisingly well. The front brakes didn't work because the brake lever on the handlebars was really bent, but at least the rear barely worked.

There will have to be countless things done to this bike such as:

-New Handlebars
-New pedals
-New Brake and Shift lines
-New brake and Shift levers
-New gear changers (I think they're supposed to be called chain derailers)
-New rims, tires, and inner tubes
-New seat
-New rings to replace the extremely rusted ones (The ones where the handlebars join the frame)
-And maybe new paint, but im not sure

I also need for the blue bike

-New seat
-New Performance front assembly (I need taller shocks because my tire hits the frame when i jump even a little.)


Its a lot worse than it actually looks.


And here is my baby without her rim . Notice the towels, lol. I put the rim back on right when i got home from my testing the other bike, and its actually aligned a tiny bit better than before so im happy.

What i would compare putting the red bikes rear rim on that other bike would be like put a Ferrari's rear tires and a much older beaten chevy that needs a lot of work. Now imagine how i felt, lol.

On the topic of bikes, I also replaced my sisters bikes front assembly which had no shocks, with the parted red mountain bikes front assemble so she has shocks now. She just doesn't have front brakes now, which i could actually easily fix because i still have the red mountain bikes front brakes in my shelf full of bike parts, lol.

Any Ideas? Where could i find good parts without a big price tag? (Such as the blue bikes front assembly problem, I can't find a taller pair of shocks for less than $150 dollars and even #100 is way out of my budget range)

NIce looking bike, and nice ferrari description O_o

I found that if you find rougher cement it doesn't eat your tire as fast, but white cement genereally does.
SETTING UP YOUR BIKE:
pump up your tires to a dangerous level, 100psi or so,
if your tire is expensive, or soft, or walmart, tape it up with duct tape, WRAP IT TIGHT as a virgin...
make sure your chain has ~ 1/2 an inch of play if you push it down, reduces resistance..
theoretically, tilting your bars forwards, will allow you to get more weight off the rear.
TAPPING YOUR TIRE WILL MAKE IT KICK OUT FAST< BUT IT IS WORTH IT

Right 90' turn:

go at a fast/lightspeed pace
start on the outside, put your right foot back...
brake hard as put your weight as far forward as you can bend, and turn in...
(REALLY PUSH it, I rest my knee on my bars... The more weight up front, the longer the drift.)
countersteer as little as you can, try to keep it turning around the corner, to make the tire stay out longer. during the drift, try to push your right tire out with your calve..and get ready to pedal out as hard as you can..
Pedal out hard.

LINK:

exiting the corner, pedal out hard to get as much speed as you can, put your left foot back towards your cassette, preparing you to go left, try little things like pulsing your brake once to see if it helps you kick out better or something...

LEFT HAIRPIN:
continue from link,
Brake earlier than you think, try to make your rotation smooth, and have ALOT of angle, countersteer fast, and try to move to the outside, lest you go into a 2 wheel slide...(
if you go into a 2 wheel, put your left foot down and let your pedal hit the ground while you fix the steering.)
try to exit on the inside, and pedal quickly to right yourself again.

That is all.

thanks for the advice but the bike i used has no brakes.

They also paved it. Its not all bad now though, I can take my red bike really fast into the parking lot, then be able to take very sharp corners at high speeds. I basically have a race course now which is great.

reply:
oh, thjats cool
I hurt my foot while drifting, tape works like a charm, when you have enough.

Very nice. I like that old Schwin. Very classic.

I forgot about this thread, lol. I haven't been riding my bikes at all lately, but then again, i haven't been able to do much of anything but schoolwork in the past few weeks.

I just got some nice bmx handle bars, and two pegs. God knows what im going to do with them though. I might sell them if anybody is interested, but if not, ill find a way to put it on my pretty dead prototype bike.

What i mean by dead, is basically that, it's not really ridable. I need a new sprocket because a good amount of the teeth are broken, the rear rim finally rusted enough to puncture the inner tube and become completely useless, and the front tire, no matter how many times i switch out the inner tube, keeps going flat.

I guess ill try to get back into my bike hobby, but i'd rather save up for a car so i can have even more fun when february comes along and i get my liscense.