Congratulations on your Flying Pigeon. It looks great. Please keep up updated.

Once some of the lesser quality components are replaced, it should be a nice cruiser.

I grew up with one of these Flying Pigeons and family also had a "Forever" brand bike plus a few others over the years. The Pigeon was my main transportation for high school and college some 30 - 35 years ago. It was never routinely serviced or maintained unless there was a problem then it would be repaired. It did the job to get me from point A to point B for all these years. Many times, three of us would be on the same bike: the rider, one on the rear rack, and another one sitting on the top tube. I never remembered even a single flat tire during these many years of my bike life with them.

The "Forever" was a 1967 model 13 (CrMo frame) at the time. The lat time I saw it in 1986, it was still there in ridable condition but with severely rusted brake surfaces on the wheels. It was a lighter and better bike than the Pigeon.

Every time I saw one of these roadsters, I wanted one, even though I have many other probably "better" bikes now. I might still get a Pigeon since this is the Chinese New Year!

On the Internet, there is a series of videos showing how to assemble and repair such bike (it was for a different model but the same rod brakes, etc). The video is in Chinese but the pictures are self-explanatory. If you are interested, I can try to find it and then point you to the link. I actually have a disk of the video that I still use for bike repairs.