Sometime last year I picked up a quite a bit of Hi-E stuff, much of it in one lot from a CR member. I'm thinking of using a pair of Hi-E wheels, with Harlan's version of the Hi-Lo rear hub, on the Paramount Elite I'm finally getting around to building up. But this wheelset and most of the other rear hubs are 120 to 122 mm, while the early 80's Paramount is 126 mm as one would expect.
I know it has been said that one used to have to send the hubs back to Harlan for bearing replacement, but what about the end caps? Can they be removed without special tools? If so, what is the best way to remove them? If I can get them off, I might insert spacers under the end caps to respace to 126.
This one wheelset is completely Hi-E, including hubs, rims, spokes and nipples. The spoke nipples do not protrude from the inside of the rim, but are tightened from outside the rim using a special socket wrench. Don't some modern prebuilt wheels use nipples of this type? If so, replacement nipples for these modern wheels might work to replace missing Hi-E nipples. Except the Hi-E nipples seem to be 15 gauge. Are any of the modern nipples 15 ga?
Also in regard to this same bike, a 1982 Paramount catalog shows the Paramount Elite with World Championship bands on the seattube, which appear to be identical to the bands first used on the 1973 or 1974 Paramounts when the full seattube panel decal was discontinued. But checking Worlds band decals for sale, I'm surprised to find that there seems to be no standard order in which the colors appear, but every possible order seems to be used on various bikes. One would think everyone would use the order in which the colors actually appear in the rainbow in the sky, but obviously not. Anyone know a source for World Championship band decals using the Schwinn style?
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA