Schwinn Sports Tourer Restoration / ..

 
  After years of neglect, I decided to clean up my 24 in. <a href=http://waterfordbikes.com/SchwinnCat/flschwinn_1971_1980/1971_09.html>1973 vintage Schwinn Sports Tourer bicycle</a>, purchased from Chucks Hardware in Pullman, WA for $202.00 in the fall of 1973, as those were the only 2 years that the orange colors were available. Frame was stripped and sanded and given a fresh coat of orange paint, close to it's original color. Interestingly, the frame has no serial number stamped on the head tube as it is supposed to. Likely this was due to it being replaced under Schwinn's lifetime warrantee a few years after I bought it, when one of the bottom bracket bearing cups just popped out of the frame, stripping off the internal threads. Schwinn shipped out a new frame to the hardware store and they reassembled the bike at no cost as I recall. So my guess is that Scwhinn had spare frames for this, but since they did not make it into finished bikes, they did not get stamped. After many coats of color and a couple clear coats, it was finally time to put it back together. I had replaced much of the orignal components back in the mid-80's including a triple chain ring (24-34-48) Sekai crankset replacing the original 40-54 double ring crank. I run the the original 5 sprocket cluster (14-17-22-28-34) for the hills (gives 19 This time, I added some clipless pedals and a new Serfas Dorado saddle and Kalloy Uno seat post (26.8mm) to replace the old Brooks leather saddle and steel seat post that had seen better days. A Shimano RD-M700 Deore XT rear derailleur handles the shifting in back, it'll shift up onto the big 34T sprocket and actually will actually handle 41 teeth of gear change. Here is a closeup of the <a href=http://www.sheldonbrown.com/schwinn-braze.html>hand-made fillet brazed head tube on the frame</a>. It is made of straight gauge 4130 cromoly steel tubing. Bike weight came in around 31 lbs. with the pump and 2 water bottle holders, probably 30 lbs. stripped. In stock form I think it ran 33 lbs. according to the catalog scans, but I recall it ran a few lbs. more than that. Here us a closeup of the seat tube again with the hand brazed joints, plus the unique bullet end seat stays. I added a quick release seat post clamp to fit the 29.8mm OD seat tube.  
 

 
  This is the triple ring crank set and the Shimano M324 combo platform/clip-less pedals are attached to a new sealed bottom bracket (Shimano UN54 68x122mm). Also added a wire-less Garmin crank/speed sensor to feed data to a bike computer on the handlebars. And a set of original size 27x1-1/4 Here is a shot after finishing 5 miles of fire road and single track trails in the local Montebello Open Space Preserve on 1/1/2012. Ironic that this is the exact area where  
 

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