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Old 09-13-10, 09:16 AM
  #25  
Zaphod Beeblebrox 
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Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: Smugglers Notch, Vermont
Posts: 7,536

Bikes: Upright and Recumbent....too many to list, mostly Vintage.

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Originally Posted by Bianchigirll
beautiful pic! I almost thought it was taken in Pa along I80.
If you crop out the mountains it sure does

I show it off constantly, but here's my tricked out Varsity. Hardly a day goes by that it doesn't get taken out for an errand of some sort.

before:

After:


JJPistols has a mad max lookin' Varsity that inspired me to do this...the tires are 26 x 2.25. Clearance is tight

The saddle and crankset are original, the Wald baskets came with it (I krylon'd them white)
The Wheels were an exercise in trying something new...The rear is a 7 speed shimano nexus freehub w/Roller Brake (drum Brake), the Front is a Sturmey Archer XFDD hub - with a Drum Brake and a Dynamo. Rims are Sun Rhyno Lite, straight gauge spokes.
Since the rear hub was providing 7 shimano spaced cogs I figured It was a ripe opportunity to try out index shifting(my first indexed bike), So I went with a set of Shimano 105 7-Speed shifters, and a pair of inline cable adjusters. The shifters were meant to be screwed to braze-on shifter mounts, but I needed a clamp, so I disassembled a set of shimano DT Ratchet shifters and scavenged the clamp-band and shifter mounts for the new shifters.

I knew I wanted an upright seating position and thought that Downtube shifters would be too big a reach when the bike was fully loaded with groceries so I put the shifters on the top tube, using the top tube brake cable stop as a stop to keep the clamped shifters from moving around.


Look closely and you'll see the clamp-bands aren't sitting directly on the tube. Schwinn EF frames have a smaller outside diameter than standard, so you need a little spacer to fit standard parts on these frames. PastorBob showed me the way on these...there's small sections of brass bushing being used as spacers between the frame and nearly all the clamp-on parts.

Finally the handlebars and stem were an unexpected PITA. I wanted to use the original Schwinn Stem, but the handlebars I'd chosen had too tight a bend to fit through the clamp. The only way was to use a stem with a removable faceplate. Unfortunately I couldn't locate a suitable stem with the necessary .833" size for the Varsity Steerer. By sheer force of googling I came up with a threaded-to-threadless adapter for .833" steerers. That combined with a cheapo threadless stem gave me the removable faceplate as well as a nice rise to the bars.



Its kludge, followed by unintended application, mixed with a little bit of "This probably shouldn't work"....but it all works perfectly and its now completed its second summer of service with nothing more than a little wheel truing back in May.

still to come...squeezing in some fenders.
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Last edited by Zaphod Beeblebrox; 09-13-10 at 10:07 AM.
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