Okay, now that we've beaten the refinish or not subject around, I have a question. While it is usuall desireable to restore a vintage bicycle with original parts, would it be sacrilige to replace some components with more updated gear or higher quality components that may have originally come with the bike? I ask this because of the availability or cost of some vintage components seems to have gone through the roof. I assume this was regularly done by original purchasers in the course of owning the bike anyway and as long as the replacement components fall somewhere in the timeline and don't change the character of the bike, it shouldn't be too much of a sin, especially if the object is also to increase the bikes performance.
Fred Durrette
Summerville, SC