What a whirlwind. But both my pop and I are really happy with the paramount. This is a thread telling the story of the sprucing up process of a 1972 Schwinn Paramount P13 I gave my pop for Christmas. I know it’s a little late, but writing this takes time and life is very busy as of late. Some was written during and some after for the post. So forgive me if the tenses change.
So,Time flew by this year. School, work and family makes certain that time will fly. So it was little more than a week before Christmas and the paramount was NOT ready to present “under the Christmas tree”. As it always seems to happen, nothing went as smooth as I was anticipating. The pedals laughed at everything I threw at them, I ended up using a very period inappropriate stem, I had to switch to the wheelset from my international, the bottom bracket was a pill, AND I only remembered to take pictures half the time. But my pop was still really, really happy.
I’ve only done a couple full builds. The process that I’ve gotten the most success with is going about the project as a multiple “act” event.
Act 1 - Clean the parts.
One by one, clean the parts as I take them off the bike. I put all the clean parts in a cardboard box and plastic baggies. The dirty stuff can stay on the frame. When clean, I may or may not lube and grease them. I will lube pivot bolts and grease bearing surfaces. But save some things for assembly. I usually go in this order:
- Rear Derailleur
- Front derailleur
- Brake calipers
- Pedals (clean, repack and assemble)
- Cranks/chainrings -look at those chainrings! They basically weren’t dirty at all!
- Headset
- Wheels (clean, repack and assemble hubs)
- Bottom bracket (clean, repack and assemble)
