Thread: ROBY cruiser?
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Old 11-29-14 | 11:03 AM
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surreal
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Joined: Mar 2002
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From: NJ
Hungarian. Who knew? I think the bike looks rad, but here are my two concerns:
-That's a cottered crank. You'l want to get a proper press for it, or you'll be cussing yourself out every third ride when the pin moves and the crankarm slips and life begins to suck. B/c, well, you'll know it's your fault for not getting the proper tools. FYI: you won't be able to service the BB without removing a crankarm.
-Being an old bike from Hungary, you might have some mysterious threads. I've found most of the bikes from that part of the world (Germany, Poland, Austria) to have some fairly "standard" threads, but the fact is, going back that far, it's kind of a crap shoot. Potentially, you might need to give all of the original parts a lot of care and attention, b/c it may not be feasible to replace them with other stuff. If the BB or headset races are shot, you might be screwed, depending on how they're sized and threaded. (This is just speculation, for all I know, it's a 1"x24tpi fork/head and a BSC bottom bracket shell... but it's experienced speculation from a guy who has known the headaches of proprietary stuff and outmoded standards... I'm just saying, be cautious here.)
-If you buy the bike, or if you already bought it, make sure you keep EVERYthing you ever pull off of it. You said you're doing a full restore, and to me, that means keeping it as original as possible, but the word "restore" has different meanings to different ppl on the internet, so I figured I'd say something about holding onto parts--not just for originality, but to keep yourself safe from any weird "standards". If/when you start pulling it apart, you might want to do so with an eye towards ascertaining how the head and BB are threaded, just in case.
-Overall, I'm thinking that the bike is fairly complete, and looks like it mostly needs a chain, a good cleaning, a tune-up (lube, maybe wheels trued), and some attention to the surface rust....plenty online about safe/effective ways to do that. That front rim is ugly now, but I bet it'll come up nice with some TLC. I bet it has a Fichtel & Sachs rear hub; if that's the case, you ought to love the hub (I'm a huge fan) and it will probably hold more clues as to the vintage of the bike than any other single part....

HTH
-Rob
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