Aaron, I have a radical idea here. Don't do a thing to this bike for cosmetic reasons. Make changes for functionality, as needed. Use it as a commuter bike. If you haven't sunk much into it, you can lock it up and not worry. You can argue that it's valuable but that's only a potential, and you bring the potential out only if you invest in it. If you don't invest in it, then it's not valuable. Therefore, you can lock it up. And it's already set up as a very functional and fun commuter bike. You have enough fancy bikes to be able to abuse one of them. So whenever your Huffy doesn't suit the day's needs, you can use this. And vice versa.