It's been awhile but Dave is progressing, Wheels are done but I ended up putting new tires on them, while cleaning them I noticed the tread was separating on the old tires and I didn't have any good used ones that I wanted to part with. I had a pair of cheap tires I had bought during the pandemic for a bike that has "left the building" so I put them on Dave's wheels. I also swapped the 5 speed road freewheel for a 5 speed from an old MTB with much larger cogs to gear him down for improved climbing. For those that have never had the "pleasure" Varsities are NOT fun to climb with.
I picked up a vintage Schwinn Approved saddle for $5 and put it on today. I also found an old set of Dia Compe levers with blue hoods and the hoods have have cutouts for turkey levers. Oh yes, I
am putting turkey levers on him.
He's also getting purple bar tape. Why purple? Because I bought some for another bike but it wasn't the shade of purple it showed in the ad and clashed really badly. However, it actually looks decent (sort of) against the blue on Dave and I will almost certainly never have another chance to use it up LOL. I was tempted to take a pic of him on the stand and post it but I'm going to wait until he's done. I have to clean up the brake levers and hang them on the bars, wrap the bars, run brake cables, put a chain on and set the brakes and derailleurs. He'll still look like the South end of a North bound horse but that's about a 1000% inprovement over how he looked when I pulled him out of the dirt.