My uncle bought this bike new in 1981 and used it fairly extensively through his 20's. It has been sitting in his shed for a long time though and had fallen into disrepair. Chatting to him one evening recently over a few drinks he was regaling his cycling tales to me (I race also) and he mentioned about an old bike he had stored away that he had always planned to do something with. Torn between selling it, keeping it, restoring it etc. Anyway, when it came down to it, rather than sell it - and he'd have gotten very little for it in its current state - he passed it my direction to do with it what I pleased.
There was quite a bit of surface rust so the first step was to strip it off and get it painted because I couldn't start using it outside and expose the frame to the elements long term in that condition.
Stripped all the parts down and they cleaned up pretty well. Still more to do on most of them to get a lot of the ingrained dirt lifted, but some autosol and elbow grease made everything look much better.
So this is how she currently stands. I had replacement Super Course and Reynolds decals delivered during the week and I'm hoping to have the frame powdercoated at some stage over the next couple of weeks with the aim of rebuilding it using as many of the original parts that I can to keep authenticity up, and costs down!
Would it be sacrilegious to go with a different colour? I'm torn between a pearl white as close to original as I can get, or something more modern like a candy red.
There was quite a bit of surface rust so the first step was to strip it off and get it painted because I couldn't start using it outside and expose the frame to the elements long term in that condition.
Stripped all the parts down and they cleaned up pretty well. Still more to do on most of them to get a lot of the ingrained dirt lifted, but some autosol and elbow grease made everything look much better.
So this is how she currently stands. I had replacement Super Course and Reynolds decals delivered during the week and I'm hoping to have the frame powdercoated at some stage over the next couple of weeks with the aim of rebuilding it using as many of the original parts that I can to keep authenticity up, and costs down!
Would it be sacrilegious to go with a different colour? I'm torn between a pearl white as close to original as I can get, or something more modern like a candy red.
