BikeManDan

So I am in the midst of restoring a 77 Schwinn Superior, planning to replace the aged olive drab cloth tape with new cork and to my surprise upon unraveling the cloth, it was actually black and to my further surprise, the reverse side is still completely good. Why let good cloth tape go to waste, so I tape it back up with the reverse side showing

Reversed 30 year old cloth tape on the left, sun bleached cloth tape on the right



Next up, removing the heinous suicide levers someone added and adding some black hoods

TrekSandra

Looks great to me. Question. How do you tape around those hoods when they don't fold back?

BikeManDan

Tape goes down, hoods go over, at least in my case

Biggest issue with the hoods is that they weren't intended to be used with a barrel adjuster so I had to heat the hood up with a heat gun and then wiggle its way on. Not perfect but it worked

TrekSandra

ah. so you have already taken the suicide brakes off.

BikeManDan

Taking the lever off is the easy part, then you just have to deal with the longer stud sticking out of the brake lever body. 2 minutes and a hacksaw took care of that. You can then put a hood over it and no one will be the wiser (Except if you post about it on the internet, then everyone will know your secret)

JunkYardBike

Here's another method, for hoodless applications or delicate hoods, courtesy of Ray Dobbins:

https://www.raydobbins.com/molteni_replica/molteni_tip