Originally Posted by
MrK.
I have an opaque blue one I picked up a few years ago. It was 100% original when I got it. It had been stored in a shed for many years and I'm embarrassed to tell you what I paid for it. The original tires still had the vent spews from casting. I guess it had less than a thousand miles on it. The tires and seat were hopelessly dry rotted from the Texas heat and the East Texas humidity had rusted the chrome. I greased all of the bearings, replaced the tires and tubes. Did the aluminum foil trick on the chrome. Put on a saddle from a later model Schwinn Voyageur and started riding it. It still has the original cables although they were removed and greased. I love it.
I would love to find one of these in this color and condition. At which point I could build an exact replica of the bike I used for touring in the Erie/upstate New York/southern Ontario area back in the 70's. Mind was essentially stock, except that I replaced the clincher rims with sew-ups, added black Blumel fenders, and everything on the bike was either opaque blue or black. Brooks Swallow saddle. I was using the first generation Cannondale panniers back then, which were rather radical compared to what preceded them.
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Syke
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, (1926)