Classic & Vintage - 1937 tandem steer from the Rear, crank and bottob bracket questions

hey everyone, picked up a 1937 tandem steer from the rear, it is a coloson or a schwinn, thinking colson though. it's a complete bike. I started tearing it apart to clean the bearings and put it back together.
the problem i ran into is one of the threaded bearing races for the front crank is damaged. the bearings themself set into an eccentric for adjusting the tension on the chain between the front and rear cranksets. the bearing nut that threads onto the crank and holds the bearing in place (Looks like a bearing race with threaded center) is broken.
what are my options as i don't think i can get this part. been thinking about either finding a 70's schwinn or huffy and using it as a donor tanedm to swap all the drive components.
or convertting the bottom brackets. and switching the Newdeparture cogn the rear wheel to a standard 1/2 chain cog. so far have found an eccentric replacement for the front BB and a conversion for the rear, but not sure on what to do for crank's? been thinking two tripple cranksets, the front one with only the small 30 tooth chainring and the rear crank running the small 30 tooth chainring. and leaving the other two chainrings on it as well and using one of them to drive the rear wheel? but am lost at this point because have no idea what size the other chainrings should be or what some cheaper available tripple cranksets are that might be available. also wasn't sure on crank length? dopn't want the pedals to hit the ground when pedaling the bike. LOL oh another question was can different brand name tgripple cranksets be used together. was watching a couple different things on e-bay. tripples with 170 mm crank length.

anyway know it's alot!, but stuck and not sure what to do, last messed with bikes was a kid rebuilding my BMX bike and it had a 1 piece crank.

here are some links to picks:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/149-1.jpg

the second picture shows the damaged part.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/151.jpg



Here are some other pics of the bike and parts:

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/162.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/156.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/157.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/158.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/159.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/161.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/163.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/164.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/165.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/166.jpg

Dude, that thing is cool. You could use a triple in the rear BB to run the sync chain and drive chain. I'm running an OPC triple with two chains on the largest and smallest rings. It works fine. On mine the chains would rub if the middle was used.

thats what i was thinking as well, a 30 tooth sprocket on the front and rear crank sets and then the bigger outter sprocket on the rear to drive the wheel and just not using the middle sprocket at all.
watching a couple matching tripple sets on e-bay at the moment was thinking about running the tripple up front as well but with only the 30 tooth sprocket on it. it would be a 30 tooth to 30 tooth front and rear crank set and then the 52 tooth to the rear cog on the rear wheel hub. which is a new departure model D hub. watching a 1/2 inch regular tooth cog on e-bay for the New departure model D Hub as well. hopefully can get this thing together before the end of the month.
gonna keep the paint on the bike, it looks to vintage and kewl to do a refinish on.

thanks for posting back.

Thing that sucks is you lose hill climbing ability. Also the smaller your sync gears are, the more force you put on the frame tubes. Maybe think about doing it the opposite way, sync with the big gears. These big old heavy tandems aren't for going fast anyway. I would think a 12 or 13 on the rear wouldn't be too bad with the 30.

Try www.thecabe.com (http://www.thecabe.com) They are really into this ancient history.
That bike looks older than 1937 to me but what do I know?
That borken piece, is the race itself cracked or is it just the flange? maybe you could get away with using it if there's a good bearing surface.

hey, just curious, you have any pictures of your crankset and chain setup on your tandem? would be curious to
see it.

thanks
Rick

figured i'd post some pics of the current status, almost done, just waiting on a couple parts.
think i'm gonna leave the fenders off. the old ones are in poor shape anyway. i'll check some of them out in Ann Arbor this weekend at bike fest.
anyway cheers! LOL

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/002.jpg


http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/034.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/030.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/022.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/024.jpg
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j101/cruisinforburgers/023.jpg

..wow.

awesome. I love the paint job, and the Rear Steer linkage is trick!

Nice job, I like the paint scheme a lot. Are the tires white or grey? It's a little hard for me to tell.

GregG

Rearsteers are awesome.

So you went with the left side sync.. Is the front handlebar fixed in place? Funky seatposts!

they're white, they look more antique white though.