Originally Posted by miyata man

I am mildly surprised that this turned out as constructively as it did. If you decide to keep going in the direction of using this as an aside to your day job there are certainly better avenues of research than crowdsourcing. I would expect a lengthy dissertation of minutiae but there are some very experienced restorers and bike flippers in the C&V forum. They would appreciate a thorough search of past posts as memory can be fleeting at their age.



To give you a jumping off point on that end I should note that there are some very clear cut paths. To start there is the exact duplicate restoration that is unflinching in detail. There is also the brand conscious reimagining which is where you started with this bike and could have been taken further yet. In both of those case the quality of the job is determined by the exactness of the replication. Be it every part correct to the year and model or using the exact copyright of the corporate entity.

Nearly everything else falls into the realm of creativity. There is no accounting for taste so you may as well do what you like and expand on that. Just beware of giving birth to something that overwhelms your personal life without holding the ability to replace your day job.