Rapidrob

In 1998 I was in an animal warfare thrift store when I spotted this bike in the corner. They had 100 bucks on it which I thought was a fair price and I was helping preventing the put down of the animals.
I live on the side of a mountain and a single speed "Lead Sled" bike was just a little much for every day riding. I put the bike in my garage I left it there until 2015.
I was close to retirement and decided to see just what I could do to make the bike more ridable for an old phart like me.
A co-worker and good friend of mine had gone to Japan for training on how to hand make racing bikes,and had a collection of bikes for a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars.
He suggested I find an internal gear hub to make the bike more usable at our high altitude and mountains. I looked for months and months until I found one for sale in Japan. It would fit the frame and the spoke count perfectly. It would give the bike a seven speed gear selection.
I know there are those who would never do such a thing to the bike,but, I wanted to be able to ride it and not have a heart attack on the mountain roads.
Long story short, I learned how to string spokes in a hub from my friend and also true up the rim. I did my best to hide the control cable on the frame and it came out nice,sans the white ty-wraps holding the cable in place. ( have not any burgundy ty-waps yet) The coaster brake would stop a Semi-Truck.
The shifting is so smooth and quite if you did not feel the increase/decrease in pedal effort you'd never know you changed gears. I've been riding the bike along the Rio Grande river now and doing ten miles round trip and I have to say it is so much fun. I get a lot of questions on the bike and how I did the conversion.
At least the bike is now able to be used by me on our hills rather than just gathering dust in the corner.
Rob.

Aubergine 

3speedslow

thumpism 

Nice to have a retirement toy, isn't it? Good job on the hub swap.

thinktubes 

Rapidrob

I was amazed how easy it rolled. The inertia once it is moving is easy to keep going. While I have not gone more than ten miles a pop so far, I'd like to someday.
My riding friends can't do more than that at this time.
By law we have to have a warning bell to warn Peds and other bikers while on the cities bike trails. I looked at many of the new and old school bells for sale and didn't care for the volume,tone, quality or jacked up price.
I lived in Germany as a kid and remember many of the bikers had really cool bells that you could hear far enough away to have time to get out of the way of the bike. I found one in Holland for sale the Chinese ones are just not the same tonal quality) that I remembered they were using back then. I ordered it after the seller send me a vid of its sound.It should match the Lead Sled well and keep the fun police off my butt.

Lascauxcaveman 

Animal warfare? Sounds like a Watership Down vs Warriors mashup. My daughters would have totally read that series in their pre-teen years. JK autocorrect is a funny thing sometimes.

Oneder

I love it, most bikes today got no style.