[CR]New guy with project

(Example: History:Ted Ernst)

To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 09:06:43 -0700
From: "Zack Reuter" <zreuter@eudoramail.com>
Organization: QUALCOMM Eudora Web-Mail (http://www.eudoramail.com:80)
Subject: [CR]New guy with project

Hi All,

I am new to the group here, but a few of you are familiar to me through my reading over the years, and visiting such places as Planet Sheldon. (One of the biggest and most interesting objects I have encountered in cyberspace. I think I have worn out the hit counter on the gear calculator.) Hey, Grant. Nice new website you have there. There is a Rivendell in my future, I just know it! I am a bike nut. There are more than a dozen bikes in the basement in more or less rideable condition, and I like all kinds. I ride a modern steel mountain bike with a Judy fork and thumbshifters. There's an old Fuji ten speed that's a pretty good substitute for a touring bike. A '77 or so Trek currently tricked out as a fixed gear, with Dura Ace centerpulls. I have an '84 Stumpjumper that was rescued from a dumpster and put back into more or less original form. My father gave me a funky J.C. Higgins rod brake roadster to restore some years ago. It lives in the storage room with the old Schwinns and other non-riders, at this time. I am in the process of buying a used Eddy Merckx MX Leader, the one with the cool lugs and the big old honkin' ovalized tubes. I'm a big guy, so I'm pretty excited about that. It has STI shifters, and I'll give 'em a fair shake before I replace them with bar ends. We have a Trek tandem, with road wheels and dirt wheels. I found some old Panaracer 700c Smokes, and the frame will fit them. Just the thing for scaring the bejeezus out of your stoker. Amazingly competent on singletrack. My town bike is an '87 Bianchi Grizzly, a nice big lugged mountain bike, now in very Harleyesque form with fenders and saddle bags and "pullback" bar.

My most recent junk store treasure is a chrome 56cm Austro-Daimler Vent Noir II. It was in a group of department store bikes locked up to a lamppost in front of the local "junque" place. Years of neglect and poor storage left it with a lot of grunge on the frame and components in any area that was ever lubed. There was ample lint covering the grunge, obviously from sitting next to a dryer vent for a long time. Under all that, the Campy parts were in good shape, but the plating on the frame is another story. I finally got it all disassembled today, and started in trying to polish the frame. I found the fork was the worst part, with both legs pitted and stained beyond my normal methods of chrome rescue. I was using Quick-Glo, and being very careful to keep from damaging the lettering, stickers, and pinstripes. The fork crown looks great, but the legs aren't going to. The frame is in better shape, but there are plenty of places where the plating is not going to recover.

I got to looking closely at the lugs, and they are like the fork crown; in pretty good shape with no really bad pits. So I wondered how hard it would be to get paint to stick to the tubes. I have the skill and experience necessary to mask the lugs, the fork crown and the dropouts. I have had about as much luck as Detroit has had with trying to get paint to stick to chrome, however. That would be little, and just about all bad.

Is it a reasonable idea to do this? I mean, is the thing valuable enough in its current condition to make the paint idea crazy? The lettering on the frame is mostly all there, but faded, and the 531 decals are in readable but rough shape. I think it would look great with the lugs and crown all polished and the tubes painted Lascivious Red, or Deep Dark Black, or something. I have a good old DeVilbiss gun and all the necessary equipment to put a slick paint job on it, even if I had to do one or two tubes at a time. Should I just sell it to someone who rides this size bike, and let them worry about it? It's way too small for me.

BTW, does anyone know what Vent Noir means? My wife says it means "black hole," and has taken to referring to the door to my basement bike shop as the Event Horizon. I know what that means.

Sorry to hog so much bandwidth on my first post. I promise to be more laconic in the future.

Zack Reuter Grand Junction, CO

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