[CR]A fun recent vintage project bike

(Example: History:Norris Lockley)

From: "Ray Barron" <rb12252@hotmail.com>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:11:23 -0400
Subject: [CR]A fun recent vintage project bike

Hello,

Pictures of this bike can be viewed at:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/BrowsePhotos.jsp?collid=352290462111&UV=839521658449_678840462111

And an explanation of what I was trying to accomplish is in the following story:

The “Barron” Bicycle Story

One day I was looking at bike parts on eBay and happened across a new pair of fenders for sale. They were absolutely gorgeous and I instantly knew that I had to build a bike up around them. These were the Honjo brand, hammered, aluminum, fenders. These fenders, that are handmade in a small Japanese factory, are reminiscent of the fenders that came on some of the French road bikes of the 50’s & 60’s. In fact, I had once owned an old Rochet touring bike that had a set of fenders nearly identical to these.

Not wanting to spend a small fortune bringing this vision to fruition, I started thinking about what I may already have in my possession that I could work with. I had recently acquired a 1978 Schwinn Super LeTour 12.2 that was all in parts, being ignored, in my basement. So this, I decided, was going to be the starting point for this project.

I stripped the all decals off the frame so that I had just the white painted frame and fork. I then masked off the head tube and seat tube areas and painted some black, contrasting panels. With another old French bike as a reference, I then added some gold pin striping details on all the tubes of the frame & fork. I had a friend make me up some decals for the down tube and head tube using my last name as the “brand” for this bike. The resulting appearance was that of a vintage Raleigh or Motobecane, and was exactly the look I was after to go with the fender set that was now on its way to me.

The only original parts that I used from the LeTour were the bars & stem, crank, and one rim. Since the frame was nothing special in terms of tubing, I decided to use vintage, mid-level, components to outfit this bike - some of which I had in my inventory, some of which I would acquire from bike dealers that I call on in my job a sales rep for Pacific Cycle, and some of course, from eBay.

Having refurbished vintage bicycles before, I found this project to be a particularly fun one because I wasn’t restricted to having to come up with an exact part, or necessarily even an age appropriate part. The resulting bike is very international – with parts on her from Japan, England, France, Belgium, Italy, and the US. As well as being made up of parts ranging in age from approximately 40 years old to brand new!

The parts list:

1984 Schwinn Super LeTour frame & fork – U.S.A. Honjo-Koken hammertone fender set – Japan Brooks B-17 saddle – England Huret derailleurs and shift levers – France Universal center-pull brake calipers – Italy Mafac drilled brake levers – France Dia-Compe cable hangers - Japan Rigida 27 x 1 ¼ front rim – France Weinmann rear rim - Belgium Wa pedals – Italy ALE toe clips – Italy Lapize toe straps – France SR bars & stem – Japan Sugino Super Maxy crank set – Japan Normandy (Schwinn Approved) hubs – France Reg handlebar mount water bottle cage – Italy Peugeot rear carrier - France

Enjoy!

Ray Barron
Oak Park, Michigan U.S.A.