Hello's all around. I'm new 'round here, and thought I'd share the couple of projects I have sitting around. I'm hoping that the 1970's count as "classic and vintage" bikes.

First, in the summer of 2006 I picked up this bike at an estate sale for $3:

It was rusty and brush-painted, but the tires held air, it actually rode down the road nicely, and I dug the style of the chainguard and crank. I decided to make it into a beach cruiser. While I was stripping the paint, I unearthed enough of the badge to see that it's a Vista, and a bit of internet research told me that it was a mid-level bike at best, so I'm comfortable that I'm not ruining a major investment.

I stripped and sanded that whole fall, but in November 2006 my wife gave birth to our twins. Since the twins are kids #3 and #4 in our family, the Vista Cruiser project has kind of just sat there:


When it's all done, I'm picturing it with a springer fork, ducktail fenders, and some sort of 70's-ish metal-flake paint.

So given that I have this bike sitting in a (ironically enough) diaper box, I guess I was a fool to pick up another project, this one slated to be my oldest daughter's next bike:


Yup, it's a: L'il Chik, and it was my dad's wife's kid's bike. It's uber-rusty, but I'm planning to dip all the parts in an oxalic acid solution that I read about on another forum. It's been kid-painted with some sort of baby-blue paint that I'm hoping will come off with WD-40 or some kind of solvent, without removing the Schwinn paint as well.

I'm thinking that with just some extreme clean-up and rust removal, and new tires and chain, this'll be a nice bike again.

Okay, whatcha all think? I'm crazy, right?