One of my regular customers brought me a tub of parts and this frame over the other day, wanted me to build this bike for his grandkid. In the tub were all the parts that he'd sent down to El Paso to be chromed. I mean, he sent
all-ready-chromed parts to be chromed! And yes, now I see the difference between chrome and
show chrome! One of his buddies did the sheet metal work, another did the paint and pinstriping. I had unlaced the wheels previously to be chromed, then built them back up after they were back from El Paso.
I had two small challenges in building the bike. My customer did not want the coaster brake torque arm on the bike. It was ugly. "You know the brake won't work without it." "Yeah, but it doesn't matter, it's a show bike." But knowing what would happen without a torque arm, I 'improvised' by filing down the sides of two 17mm axle nuts. I filed flats on either side of the nut, leaving a 'key' the same width as the axle that slotted into the dropout. Then locked the filed nuts down hard on either side of the hub, mounted the wheel in the frame, and "Look, Ma! No torque arm!"
The other challenge was in making a fastener for the front chainguard mount. The frame was filled in by the sheetmetal, eliminating putting the bolt in from the left side. And just to make it interesting, there was barely an eigth inch between the tab on the bottom bracket and the sheet metal. More filing to make a special thin nut did the trick.
Oh yeah, the other challenge was not getting the paint smudged!
Here's some pix, enjoy!
