I'm going to build it!!(At least try!)

[Schwinndemonium]

....and for a forty-eight year old bike, this thing is in beautiful shape. I will attempt to do some touch up paint work to the radiant green paint, like I did to the radiant red paint on the red Jag. Though the paint is far from perfect, I believe that i can touch it up satisfactorily, that the bike looks like it is only a couple of years old, like my red bike. The rear four reflector rack is dead on MINT!! It is rust free top bottom and all around. This bike is going to make a beautiful 5 speed Mk IV Jaguar. The guy who sold me this bike, kept this thing obscenely clean!! There is only very minor rust issues to deal with, and I think a little No.7 polishing compound, and a little elbow grease will take care of that.

Anyone have a correct,nice, Radiant green crash rail three rivet seat? Craig, I might consider your seat that I saw on eBay, if i don't hear from anyone else. How bad is that "little side cut"?

Anyone need a Campus Green 1968-'70 Collegiate/Breeze seat that this bike came with? $40.00, postal money orders only.

I don't have any pictures of the bike that I took yet, but I do have the main picture that my son copied for me from the auction site itself. The next major step will be to lace the 5 speed hub into the rear rim.

The really amazing thing about this bike is that the serial # indicates that this frame was built the very same day as my 5 speed Corvette frame was,a mere 173 frames after the Corvette frame!!
The Corvette's id is;H113815
The green Jag's is; H113988
August 2nd,1961.
Wow!!

Jim.

[PEDALSNOSTALGIA]

Hey Jim, I think you found a good bike for the 5 speed project and I do like the green. Green has always been a hard color to find for me especially in good condition. I like the cable wraps, It seams like most every late 50s early 60s Schwinn I have come across with cables has had cable wrap. It must have been a very popular thing back in the day so I always try and put NOS cable wrap on when cleaning up the bikes but the NOS wrap is very hard to find and the new new wrap out there just does not have the right look. I am also surprised how many bikes even boys/men's I have found with streamers on them.

[BobHufford]

Originally Posted by Schwinndemonium

The only deviation that I have to do, is I HAVE to use a handlebar stem mounted shifter from a late 1966 Collegiate, because of the tank. With a big tank like the Mk IV Jag has, you can't have the shifter on the top bar.

I wonder if Schwinn would have notched the tank to accept the top tube shifter ...

This is going to be one cool project!

Thanks for the updates,

Bob

[Schwinndemonium]

The original finish on this bikes painted areas are in a lot worse condition than I anticipated. Seems that the former owner used what I call "U.S. Park service green" which in the auction pictures makes the frame's finish look very nice. When I looked at this bike after I unpacked it, I thought that it looked like a "movie studio" bike. That is, it would look like a brand new bike on film, but in real life, it looks like your average fifty year old bike. Don't get me wrong, it is perfect for what I want to do, mechanically, but I'm not sure, now if I want to make it look like an early '60's Jag 5 speed in 2009, and try to find matching cruddy ,but functional parts to match, or should I try to completely restore the bike with a brand new paint job, and NOS parts. How hard would it be for me to duplicate this color, without going to a body shop to do it? This color is beautiful, but it is scratched all to hell. The chrome on the tank is pitted beyond cleaning up, as is the chainguard, even though the screen graphics are very strong there and on the tank. There is rust coming through the paint on top of the chainguard, and the top bar. I only saw all this after I used polishing compound to remove all the bad "army green" touch up spray paint. And to top that off, the fork is bent. I tried to straighten it out, but all I did was knock the blades one inch out of alignment with each other. I need a bench vise, and a long pipe section to do the job right. I've successfully have straightened bent forks before!!

Maybe,I'm just trying to do too much at once, and am getting overwhelmed. Maybe ,I should just let it sit awhile. But don't worry, I won't quit working in it. I reassembled the tank and chainguard to the frame to get an idea whether I should try to touch up this paint right, or if I should strip everything off it, and start over with new paint. If I do this, this would be the first bike that I totally repainted since I repainted my black 5 speed Corvette in June of 1975!!

Here are some pictures of the Jags frame, tank and guard. What would you do? (Within financial reason, I can't afford to replate the chrome parts in this project).

Jim.

[Schwinndemonium]

Here are the last four pics that I took tonight of the stripped of parts, but cleaned up frame. Would you (1) touch up this existing paint,(2) leave it as is,or (3) strip, and repaint entirely?

One observation; this bike right now is not on par to my black '59 Jag,and especially not to my red '61 Jag,as far as condition of the paint goes.

Jim.

[OptimusJay]

Jim,
Man, I can "hear" your disapointment and frustration from your comments and I understand where you're coming from. Take a break from the bike. Spend some time doing something else completely different where you can get your mind off of it. You yourself said this would likely take months, maybe years to complete so don't think that you have to have it all figured out so soon into this great project. You'll figure out what is right for this bike whether it's repaint and rechrome or just doing the best you can with the bike as it is. If it were me I would not repaint or rechrome anything yet. I would probably get all the parts and pieces you need and actually build it to see how it looks, rides, and functions. After that if you felt it was worth the effort and $$$$, you could diassemble and restore as much or as little as you wanted.

Hang in there buddy!

Jay

[PEDALSNOSTALGIA]

Jim, My opinion would be if you are not going to be pleased with the original paint and chrome clean it up and re list it. You should be able to get your cash back you have invested and try again. I would think you would be more happy with a bit nicer original paint bike to do this project. Even if you painted it the chrome would not match the new paint. If I was going to use that bike I would leave it as is and find matching used parts. Sorry man, I know how you feel.

[Schwinndemonium]

....nor do I feel that I was ripped off. Any Mk IV Jag that I can find in the condition that this bike is in, for the money I was allowed to work with, I'm am grateful. I'm able to strip and repaint this bike. I just wanted to know if I would be devaluing it by destroying what is left of the ORIGINAL finish. You know the expression,"It's only original once" My five speed Corvette is an original five speed Corvette, but is not an original finish bike,even though it was always black. If I could duplicate,or come close to duplicating that original "glow in the dark" Radiant green paint, that would be sweet. I would much rather repair the existing paint and have it look right, than a total repaint, though, much in the same way a good bodyman matches new paint to old after he repairs rust or collision damage to an older car. All the other components that came with the bike,(brakes and levers fenders, handlebars, stem, crank & sprocket, kickstand, wheels, rack, etc)are in excellent shape,and are correct for this bike.Any parts that the bike was missing,I already have, except for the Delta toggle switch ball headlight. I also already have a newer, but correct Schwinn Approved Huret Allvit derailleur, Schwinn Sprint(Atom) rear hub, and freewheel from my 1966 Collegiate parts bike that I bought 2 years ago for $15.00.This is not the same Collegiate that I posted pictures of when I first joined this forum. That bike is a 1967, and I still have that bike in perfect condition. I just need to get the hub swapped out from that 1966 bike.I also have the correct derailleur chain, and stem shifter. (I did a dry fit today on the bike, it does fit over the rack collar, and there is plenty of room to thread back on the big forktube locknut). Mechanically, I can do it right now, but I need to straighten the fork, first,(that is after I get my rebuilt rear wheel back). So I am going to make this bike work!

Jim.

[Schwinndemonium]

....using Testors spray enamel transparent candy emerald green#1601, with a basecoat of Testors metallic silver#1246. It is practically a dead on match for this bikes original color of Radiant Green. I'm going to repaint the entire seatmast tube with this stuff, after doing some sanding to smooth out the scratches in the original paint. I may also do the entire top of the top bar, also, the same way. I think if sucessful, the frame will look very presentable, after the bike is totally reassembled.

The scanner makes the paint test look more blueish than it really is, but also, the digital pics that I took of the frame last night look the same way.

Jim.

[videoranger]

great project bike. just my opinion, but I would look to do a total repaint rather than trying to blow in that much of the frame. I think in the end you'll be more pleased with a repaint and new decals. The Testors paint color looked pretty good. As far as "value", it's what's more satisfactory to you. If you were to sell it, then original would have wider appeal. Most of all have fun!

[Schwinndemonium]

.....videoranger! It was extremely difficult for me to try and blend in the new painted areas with the old, as far as touch up painting the original paint goes. Especially since this is a two step silver coat/clear color coat process,like the original Schwinn paint, there was a dark area where the original overlapped with the new paint. That was NOT going to look good. So now my intentions have changed. I'm going to completely strip and repaint the whole frame. I'll have more better control over the color uniformity this way. It is going to be quite a challenge, though, to do a "rattle can" paint job, let alone using paints that were originally designed for scale modeling, which I am still heavily involved in. I have gotten spectacular finish results, using Testors enamels in the past.I found out that Krylon primer will work with the Testor's paint beautifully. This bike frame will be the largest thing I have ever tried to paint with them, and I believe it will come out very nice, as long as I work slowly, and patiently.

My intents for the tank, and the chainguard is to leave the original paint alone on these item, especially since the screening on them is still very nice and strong. The only thing that I might do to the top of the guard is I might repaint that, since there is rust coming through the paint there, but I'll leave the face side of the guard alone.

I know that to some of you guys, what I'm proposing to do here to this bike as far as the paint goes, is sacrilege, but hey, I gotta make the bike look nice, and I still need to keep a budget on the thing, also.Besides, the finished product is going to be a "custom-stock" bike, that Schwinn never built when it was new, but should have.With the paint job that I'm trying to achieve is that the bike looks better than it did with it's scratched up original paint, and second, that the bike will look good at four feet away!! And also that you won't be able to tell the original paint at that distance from the newly painted frame.

All that ,and I still have not decided who is going to build my new five speed rear wheel yet. I do have all the components for that to be done, though. I have decided to make another concession in this project. I'm going to use the complete rear 1966 Sprint(ATOM) hub, including the big "pieplate" spoke protector, and the 14 gear to 28 gear cog cluster freewheel. The gear cluster on a five speed Corvette is a 15 gear to 25 gear cog cluster freewheel. Not too much difference between those two ratio's, anyway. The only thing that will look different about the bike's appearance, will be the bigger chrome spoke protector, which the 1962 Corvette's had anyway.

Good news, though. I took the fork to work, in the machine shop area, I was able to realign the fork blades to the head tube, and to each other. The fork is now nice, and straight!! The only tools that I used to do this was a bench vise, a big section of electrical conduit pipe, and my eyeballs, to make sure that everything was in alignment. I described exactly how I did this to another bikes bent fork earlier this summer in a post, when someone asked if a bent fork could even be fixed.

It will probably be quite a while before I actually do get a chance to do this(the paint work), though, as the weather here is starting to turn colder, and I need to figure out how to heat the work area in my basement to be able to even do this project!!

After a series of little failures of trying to do a quick fix on the original paint on the frame, I had to set back, and take the time to figure out what the next move will be. It will be what I just described to you above. This bikes finish was not messed up overnight, and neither will it's fix be.

Jim.

P.S.,I asked the moderators to move this thread to the restoration forum, as alot of the work that I'm about to do constitutes in my eyes restoration work, and not collecting.---JRVJR.

[BobHufford]

Originally Posted by Schwinndemonium

This bikes finish was not messed up overnight ...

I've had bikes with a nice finish that I've messed up overnight.

I'm really enjoying going through this process with you and appreciate your giving us updates on not only the actual processes, but the thought processes behind them.

Keep up the good work!

Bob

[Schwinndemonium]

I work in a cabinet refacing component wholesaler woodshop, and one of the things that I get plenty of is literally tons of free sandpaper, and abrasive wide belts from the 52" widebelt sander that I operate. I have access to grits as fine as 320 grit to as rough as 60 grit. When they get slightly worn, they get thrown out. I bring alot of this stuff home, and cut it into small pieces for hand sanding stuff.

So tonight, I worked about four hours, starting to completely strip the frame of all vestiges of that pathetic condition original paint. As you can see from the picture, I'm about 2/3rds done. After it is completely stripped, I'll go over the bare frame with 180 grit, then 220. After that I will shoot a coat of Krylon red oxide primer on it. Depending on how the surface looks, I may lightly sand it to even out any major flaws in it before I do the silver basecoat. Those are my plans for now.

Jim.