slowpedal53

I have finally finished my road bike project, with much help from this forum.

This is a 1980 lugged steel Panasonic frame, which I stripped and repainted. I upgraded to indexed shifting and aero brake levers, both with Shimano 600 parts, but stuck with the old school 6-speed rear because I kinda liked it and because I didn't want to spread the frame.

Most of the parts came from judicious shopping on E-bay, including ergo handlebars that actually fit me and a really sweet 700C wheelset, Araya high-profile rims with Campy record hubs. I retained the original crankset and brake calipers, just buffed them up on a wheel for appearance sake.

I took my first ride yesterday and was really pleased. The bike is so much lighter and more responsive I couldn't believe the difference. I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the saddle this season.

So, thanks again for all the advice and assistance.

Gomez308

Great looking bike. It will ride better knowing all the work you did yourself.

neil0502

Nice job! While I can't really glean too much detail from the pic (hint, hint: more pics, close ups of various pieces!), it looks like a beautiful bike.

I second what Gomez said. Can't beat the rig you built by your lonesome.

elicheez

Looks great- What was your basic process for strip and paint?

Bruco

Congratulations on a fine rebuild! I dig that colour.

There's quite a lot of older Panasonics here in the Netherlands (with mostly terrifying paint jobs). Makes me wonder whether Panasonic actually used to build bikes/frames. As far as I know, Panasonic is/was a producer of electronic consumer goods. They used to sponsor a road racing team.

Seanholio

Any tips for those of us considering this ourselves? I consider myself to be decent at fixing my bike, and I have, perhaps, a little too much confidence while considering building my own rig sometime in the future.

slowpedal53

Thanks.

I used a combination of chemical stripper and a wire wheel in an electric drill to get all the paint off. After sanding the metal thoroughly, I applied three coats of primer, wet sanding between coats, then three coats of color, wet sanding again, then two coats of clear, sanding after the first coat, then using polishing compound on the final coat.

slowpedal53

Thanks. I'm partial to it myself.

Panasonic bikes were imported into the U.S. and elsewhere until, I think, the early 90's. The frames were made in Japan by a company called "National," which apparently owned rights to the name "Panasonic." They used that as their export brand because they couldn't register "National" as a trademark in other countries.

slowpedal53

That's pretty much where I was when I started this project. I did a lot of reading, particularly on Sheldon Brown and Park Tool's websites and in Lennard Zinn's road bike book. I also asked a lot of questions in this forum and got some very valuable information. I also learned a hell of a lot by taking the bike apart.

As I mentioned, I scoured E-bay for parts and found some great deals. I found that I changed my mind about stuff as I went along (I was originally going to put a granny gear on) and re-sold stuff, often for a profit, that I had decided not to use. I bought a few tools, namely some bottom bracket wrenches and a cable housing cutter.

The best advice I can give you is to take your time. I have a tendency to want to rush things so I forced myself to be more methodical about working on the bike, test fitting things, trying different approaches and I think it paid off.

moxfyre

Looks awesome! I recently built a touring bike, semi-retro with Suntour bar-end shifters and lugged steel frame. I find that having selected every component myself, I really love the ride.

FBKS-AK

Nice bike. I now have 2 bikes, and a spare wheel with Araya rims.

operator

Haha, how do you like that seat? I have the same one, on longer rides it's starting to piss me off.

slowpedal53

Sorry to hear that. Actually, I put that saddle on last summer before I rebuilt the bike. I did a number of long rides with it, including a century, and like it just fine.

I just put a Specialized Body geometry saddle on another bike and I like that one a lot. Maybe you could try one of those.

peripatetic

"National" and "Panasonic" brands are both owned by Matsu****a corporation. It also owns "Technics," a maker of fine stereo equipment. They're all basically the same thing. If you've ever been to Japan or E. Asia, you may have noticed that most electronic equipment that comes with batteries come with National brand batteries.

I have a question for you, slowpedal: you upgraded the wheels from 27" to 700c, right? It doesn't look like there's a lot of clearance, which I would expect there would be, between the fork and the wheels. Did you drill a lower brake hole, or am I just experiencing optical/mental () distortion? Or maybe you upgraded the fork? I was thinking about upgrading, and I'd like to upgrade my old Takara 80s frame to a newer wheelset, but I don't like the odd look of the smaller wheels with the bigger frame. It just looks kind of off to me. How'd you do it?

Nice work.

slowpedal53

Thanks for correcting me on the Panasonic thing. I didn't take the time to look it up. Memory is the first thing to go...

I did upgrade from a 27" to a 700c wheel. I was expecting this to be a big problem but it wasn't. I reused the same brake calipers, same fork and didn't drill a new hole. All I did was adjust the position of the brake shoe on the caliper and everything worked just fine. According to Sheldon Brown, there's only an 8mm difference between the 27" and the 700c.

Thanks.

peripatetic

thanks for the insight. I wasn't really correcting you--you weren't actually wrong, just elaborating a little bit. You had it more right than 90 per cent of the people out there. Funny that the editor program caught the sh*t in Matsu*****a.