Originally Posted by
brandenjs
This is the "as found today" condition. I'm a little heartbroken that someone would let this get to this condition, but pretty excited to find one at all. I'll get it back to nice rideable condition and clean it the best I can. Not sure if I want to go for a total repaint. I would only do that if the decals are available, but I like the original condition. 1987 model with a date of 0777 on the head badge. I'm assuming this is a Chicago built version. Correct me if I'm wrong.
It’s my non-expert understanding that it says Chicago on the badge if built there and says Quality if not. That’s what I see with my Schwinns anyway.
I was able to find an NOS set of decals on eBay for my High Sierra, so maybe you’ll have some luck there. I like to make my own decals for repaints, but the tricky/impossible part is printing light colors on clear decal stock to go on dark paint jobs. I have generally compromised in that case by printing black decals or black outlined letters through which the color of the frame paint shows.
But I now have a Cricut, so (although I haven’t done it yet) I believe I can print decals of any color on white vinyl stock and then precision cut them with the Cricut to transfer onto the bike. In that way, I believe I could recreate the originals, or create a mask to paint the original decal onto the frame. Oldshovel used to do this a lot in his earlier YouTube videos. So if you have or know someone with a Cricut, you could experiment with that. My preference is to ride a bike with a nice paint job and riffs on the original graphics than one where I’m not happy with the condition of the original paint and graphics. But I know that keeping things original means more to other people, and I have a couple of bikes where I’ve gone that way myself.