With lots of spare time, courtesy Covid-19, I was looking for something to restore. Having done cars, a plane, and an aircraft carrier I had just the thing which hasn’t been used since 1998. My 1983 Univega Viva Sport was just the thing and then things expanded beyond that as usual. This prepped me for a classic.
When I lived in the Richmond District of San Francisco I was able to do lots of riding, being just 4 blocks north of Golden Gate Park and 4 blocks south of the Presidio at 21st and Anza. Once into them one could avoid city traffic and make it down south to Fort Funston or north into Marin across the Golden Gate Bridge. At the time the west side was open to bikes only as the walkway is much narrower than the east side populated by tourists. Moving to the East Bay meant city streets which do not interest me due to safety and at the same time I discovered the USS Hornet and spent every free hour on her.
My bicycle history started off as a 19″ 3 speed when I was seven. I insisted, and so my parents bought it even though I needed a curb to get on my bike. By 1967 I now had a green 22″ Super Sport which was replaced by a blue 24″ Super Sport in 1968 when the green was stolen out of the open garage. Somewhere along the way the blue bike vanished in the late 70s and I can’t recall how. This Univega was the replacement and now it needs a complete overhaul from cables, bearings, rims, tires, brakes, and tape.
First the rims and shredded 22 year old tires came off. After throwing the tires and tubes away and cleaning the rims with 000 steel wool, the hubs were next. The grease was more solid than anything else but liberal use of mineral spirits cleaned everything up. Front hub is easy so I’ll show the rear hub and freewheel.
Freewheel off with tool
Now the central part of the freewheel
Small bearings on both sides that need cleaning and then re-greased. I use my moly fortified wheel bearing grease which I have plenty of
The ancient grease in the wheel hub slightly out of focus somehow
Shot glasses come in handy for things other than shots
All ready to put back together
The packed hub before the grease seal
Re-assembly of the freewheel
Cables, chain, brake pads and hoods, re-greasing pedals, and installing tubes and tires are fairly straightforward
You might note that the bike came with 27″ gumwall tires back in the days. Like cars with 14″ rims the 27″ rim isn’t used today and consequently the 27″ tire is a little harder to come by. The gumwall is not considered a top of the line tire today but it is period correct and I think the bike looks better with it, just like whitewalls on my cars. Fortunately Kenda still makes these tires and so I ordered three complete sets. Once on the bike I checked trueness which was pretty close and only needed slight tweaking.
Wow, now that wasn’t hard, so let’s do the exact same thing to another bike like my 1997 Specialized Hardrock. No tape to worry about but those black rubber ends are gooey now. The rear rim has a broken spoke. The tires have cracks all over, even if they hold air. The gears here are called a cassette instead of a freewheel and needs a slightly different tool to unscrew vs. the freewheel.
Once the finished and fixed rim was back on it was time to get it true with a new spoke added. Spinning the rim allowed me to find the locations that were out and by using a spoke tool I went back and forth to eventually eliminate the slight wobble. That finished the bicycle and I can say they both glide along the road now.
However, I was thinking I do like projects, so maybe I could find one and I did…
I don’t really care for gumwall tires, as they seem to deteriorate faster, but they do fit the vintage of your Univega. However, they are actually quite trendy now, at least on mountain bikes. And yes, it’s a sign of progress (?) that 27” tires are harder to find at bike shops, but they’re still available at places like Walmart or even Ace HW if you need one urgently. Fortunately 700C and 27” tubes are interchangeable … if you can find them with Schrader valves.
The secret of 27″ gumwall tires: Panaracer Pasela’s. A wonderful touring tire, I’ve been using them on my 1969 Magneet Sprint touring bike since I built it in 2005.
^^This is the truth!
Yeah, what’s up with 700c inner tubes only coming with Presta valves?
The 700C wheel spec only supports Presta valves, partly due to rim width. You can easily find bushings to make a Presta valve tube fit a Schraeder valve rim.,
+1 on the Panaracer Pasela. The skinwall style has the same two tone effect as gumwall or tubular tires but is lighter and more durable than gumwall. I run 700x32C Paselas on my cyclocross bike where they ape the appearance of expensive tubular race tires.
Fizzy cola soft drinks are a great way to remove oxidation on chrome wheels. Worked on my vintage Schwinn Collegiate.
TBM : I do this stuff too; my subjects are ’50s through ’70s Schwinns.
For anyone else wanting to revive old bikes I recommend a great book: “Glenn’s Complete Bicycle Manual”. It is all you will need for any bike of the era I like. Used copies can be found (cheaply) on E-Bay or other booksellers. Using the book I was able to rebuild a two speed Bendix coaster brake hub; that was satisfying.
x2 on the Glenn book…it’s great!
Whenever I want to feel bad about myself, I remember that someone had to actually design the two-speed Bendix. That person’s spatial reasoning must have been monumental.
x3 on Glenn’s.
If you want the REAL bicycle repair manual, you need to dig up Sutherlands. That’s the ultimate reference manual on everything, and every bike shop worth their salt has a copy stored away. Expensive as hell, but the older obsolescent editions are available as .pdf files. And those are pretty much everything anyone of us here needs.
Also for older bicycle references and information please look up Sheldon Brown dot com, for his pleasant and deep glossary, a wonderful history of bikes and brands and technologies and adjustments and mods so on. He passed a while ago but his site is still out there. I corresponded with him once, to my benefit. I consider him to be a genius.
Welcome to my life. I’ve been repairing and restoring bicycles for 52 years now, cut my chops at A.R. Adams Cycle in Erie, PA back during the Bike Boom of the early 70’s. I’d built myself a very professional shop at my house in Montpelier, VA eighteen years ago, transferred it to my current home in Ashland, VA in 2015, . . . . . . . .
. . . . . and watched it burn to the ground in an electrical fire in November 2019. Everything lost, tools, 16 years of vintage parts collecting, and a 1935 Armstrong ladies roadster (think Downton Abbey, the village scenes, or Foyle’s War) I was restoring for a WWII British Woman’s Land Army group. Once the garage was rebuilt, I started putting together bicycle shop #4.
Garage rebuilt by last March, spent the first half of social distancing finishing the interior, putting together the shop furniture, and installing one humongous tool box, bead blasting cabinet (needed to clean up some of the manufacturer specific tools that I managed to save from the ashes).
Finally got seriously working on bicycles again by early summer. Finished up a bit of long term work on the 1958 Raleigh Lenton Grand Prix (pictured), converted a Chinese Flying Pigeon (think Mao-era Beijing) to Sturmey-Archer 3-speed, and restored a 1955 Royal Enfield 3-speed that I picked up at a yard sale last summer.
Now it’s down to parts hunting: Next project is a 1979 Peugeot PX-10 that I’ve had half done for years. Fortunately, what parts I had saved for it were installed on the frame about three months before the fire, because these bikes are subtly different from the rather common Bike Boom PX-10’s when it comes to equipment.
This is what keeps me going in retirement. I often find it funny that, in the last 50+ years, I’ve gone from 1 antique car, thru 15 antique motorcycles, and am now running thru nearly 100 antique bicycles since I reopened my workshop in 2004.
TBM3FAN, thanks for sharing this, this is a hobby of mine, too.
It’s very therapeutic working on bicycles, especially like the ones seen above. I wish I could ride them as well, but my aging body relegates my Schwinn Paramount and Sports Tourer to hanging from the ceiling. This summer I rode the Paramount for the first time in years, and I lasted about 4 laps around the block before I had to stop. Though they lack the charm and craftsmanship of vintage road bikes, newer relaxed geometry road and fitness bikes work for me now.
We’re fortunate in our area to have numerous trails (like the Iron Horse) and streets with bike lanes – it’s so much better than when Ii was young.
I can’t wait for the National Handmade Bicycle Show to resume after the pandemic.
Then stay tuned for my Friday story on the classic I found.
I know of an Iron Horse Trail. It runs from Martinez down through the San Ramon Valley.
Routine maintenance and quality components are the keys to long-term bicycle enjoyment. Big-box bikes are cheap but, even when new, aren’t so terrific, and quickly go downhill. It doesn’t take long before constant adjustments and/or replacement components are needed (if they can even be found since the cheapest parts are usually oddball sizes). LBS (Local Bike Shop) bicycles are much more expensive (at least twice as much for equivalent equipment), but you get what you pay for, not only in the bicycle, but after purchase expertise and advice.
What’s rather fascinating is how big a hit the cheap Chinese bicycle industry has taken due to Trump’s tariffs. Go into any Walmart today and the bike racks are virtually devoid of any adult-sized bicycles (and have been that way for sometime). Whether this is good or bad, I really can’t say, but it would be interesting to know if the higher-quality bicycle industry has actually benefitted.
Well said. In recent years I’ve been given some Chinese mass market bikes. They look good on the show room floor, with impressive features at a low price. But imho they’re counterfeit. They simply do not operate or last in the expected manner. Normal use quickly reveals fundamental problems and the owners throw them out in disgust. I’ve done my best to fix and ride but find an ongoing flood of problems means continuous repairs and adjustments. Foil thin rims warp. Cassette ratchets slip and break, deraileurs flex and bend, throwing chains or get jammed in the spokes etc.
Older bikes, even cheap department store units don’t have these problems. They were heavy and inefficient, but at least they held together.
If these counterfeit bikes are removed from the market, the bicycle world will benefit, at least because novice and casual riders won’t give up on the hobby due to frustrating defective equipment.
You don’t want to know how many absolute crap Chinese bicycles I’ve assembled in the past year, because the bicycle shops are gutted. I’m amazed at the crap they are selling on Amazon. On the good side, it’s better crap than what they were selling during the 70’s Bike Boom. Some of those WalMart bikes are actually rideable.
High end bike shops are empty as well. Between supply chain constraints and high demand for almost 12 months now, it’s hard to get bikes or even some repair/maintenance/upgrade items. Fortunately, as with most cars, modern bikes are pretty durable. I have one semi-vintage (1980’s) bike I bought new, a semi-boutique brand that’s considered very desirable, with a quality steel frame, but like a 1960’s Detroit car with drum brakes and sloppy steering it’s more fun to be seen with than actually ride. My modern carbon-framed bikes, even “obsolete” now at 6 and 7 years old, are a pleasure to ride and don’t need much maintenance.
Well said. Like a vehicle purchase, the best value is not always at the cheapest price. I dare say that a high-end, big-box bike with lots of features might not be as good a value as the purchase of a more basic, low-end LBS bike. I’m thinking like, say, a basic Trek bike, which are only carried by an LBS. Not only will the components be better, you also get access to decent bike techs, something quite unlikely to be found in the bicycle assembly area of a discount store.
Experience has shown me that the most expensive Walmart bikes are the equivalent of the least expensive one sold at a bicycle shop. Not surprisingly, they also cost about the same.
Walmart bikes have been getting better, I’ve noticed that pretty much all their Schwinn branded bikes selling from $250.00 up are actually respectable. A lot of this is due to the late Sam Walton’s kids and (especially) grandkids are quite cycling oriented, and have made effort into improving the bicycles they sell. It’s possible to purchase a carbon fiber framed road bike thru Walmart mail order nowadays.
There’s a line of videos on YouTube under the heading “Kev Central” where a guy road tests Walmart bikes and gives some good, honest reviews, slagging whenever necessary. He’s been doing this long enough and has a good enough reputation that the company sends him new bikes to review as they put them on the sales floor.
This might seem political, but, it is really US marketing.
Please do not bash China for a cheap Walmart product not wearing well.
They send Walmart product that Walmart asks for and wants to sell at the price specified.
China makes a vast world of wonderful bikes at higher prices, not sold through Walmart.
Like all other products of every possible configuration.
Johnny Ro raised an important point that is relevant to many products. It is far too common, in my opinion, for people to bash foreign-made products in ways that imply that the foreign manufacturers, and by extension the citizens of those countries, are inferior.
The problem is in fact the US companies who, in search of inexpensive yet profitable products, give the overseas manufacturers powerful incentives to cut corners in labor and material costs. We are then saddled with the high long-term costs of these low-priced items.
In the bicycle market, the vast majority of bikes sold in the US, regardless of the brand name, come from factories in China or Taiwan. These manufacturers can make high quality bikes and components, and they can also make cheap junk, depending on the desires of the companies who set the specifications.
I thank everyone for the article and the comments. I too collect and repair vintage bicycles, so this has made for interesting reading.
Perhaps there’s some overlap of interest in classic cars and bikes. I started repairing bikes as a kid knowing if I wanted to ride I had to learn to fix them too. I had an old Beekay roadster when all my friends had expensive ten speeds, so I updated mine with their cast-off components.
I saved up enough lawn mowing money to buy a new Gitane Interclub, just as the biking world moved to mountain bikes. But that machine was a revelation to ride, so much faster and more precise than anything else I’ve ridden.
Since then, I’ve collected a dozen English, French, Japanese and Canadian vintage tourers, and a dozen American mountain bikes, along with a few unusual Canadian hybrids.
I’ve pared the collection down a bit by giving away some useful but mundane bikes to needy friends and their kids. But cheap new Chinese -made bikes have flooded the market making it difficult to even give away older bikes (at least pre Covid). They’d rather buy something new.
I’ve benefitted from this trend and the move to new bike technologies. The expensive bikes of my youth can be bought for pennies in recent years, as most people shun them for being old fashioned and obsolete.
The Gitane Interclub was a wonderful bike, it’s best competition was to buy a Raleigh Super Course and have someone build you a set of sew up wheels to go with it. I raced a Gitane Professional Surper Coursa (all Campagnolo Nuevo Record) back then and own a 72 Tour dr France now, my oldest bike in the collection.
And yeah, I own one bike with brifters, three Rossins with indexed downtube shifters, and everything else is traditional friction shifting. I refuse to leave 1973.
Great article, more of these please. I refurbished an 80s road bike and a 90s mountain bike myself last year, after teaching myself some basic bike maintenance during the lockdown.
Much fun to be had working on old bikes and with a quick turnaround, my need to for instant gratification is fulfilled. Curb finds are the best.Riding my 1996 Cannondale SuperVee on the trails with my son on his new 29” tire Framed brand bike with dual disc brakes is a real hoot. Rode these same trails when it was new, so the old stuff still works fine.
Thanks for the article. It’s always interesting to learn about people’s non-car interests. I’ve been riding, building and maintaining bikes since I was a kid, though I stopped for a few years while my son was young. He’s now 16, and decided he wanted to do some road riding after we (I am a teacher) were locked out of school last year.
For financial reasons, and because I like old machines, we went on Craigslist and found a bike his size at what seemed a rather high price. The buyer wasn’t willing to negotiate, claiming that good used bikes were getting expensive. Because no other decent bikes were available in his size, we made the deal.
Trips to local bike shops revealed the cause of the problem. Most bicycles sold in the US come from factories in China, and they were laid low by the virus. This gave me the idea for my summer project.
I scoured online classifieds for old (but once good) bicycles being unloaded by people spending some of their downtime cleaning out their houses. Most were purchased for under $50, and I refurbished them with used parts from my inventory as well as select new parts. On a typical bike I upgraded the brakes to more modern, safer ones, and replaced the shifter and brake cables and housings in addition to cleaning and lubrication.
Bikes are much easier and cheaper to work on than cars. If I find one in good shape I can strip it down and build it back up good-as-new in a couple hours with a small selection of tools and less than $20 in parts.
Most of my customers were people who would have bought new bikes were they available, and didn’t have the repair skills to bring an old one back to life. I liked the fact that I brought new life to a bunch of previously neglected bicycles, most of which were made in the US before that went away. The refurbished bikes came out looking good, and in great mechanical condition.
In addition to making my customers happy and making some money for myself, I kept some bikes for me and my son, and paid for our summer riding adventures. The only thing I had hoped for that didn’t happen was that my son would take an interest in bike repair. He remains decidedly uninterested in working on cars or bikes, and I continue to work to be OK with that.
That’s been my last fifteen years, until the fire took out my shop. Off all the bad bits of timing . . .
I’m sorry to hear that.
I stopped when the supply of acceptable bikes began to dry up, which coincided with the need to focus back on my job.
Local bike shops, absent new inventory, have also gotten in on that game around here, though I expect that they will charge quite a bit more than us shade-tree mechanics.
Steel frame touring bikes have a special place in my heart. I had three French and German bikes (Mercier, Schauff, Peugeot) in my 20’s through 40’s. Then twenty years ago I bought an Italian steel touring frame (Paolo Vitali) and had it equipped with good Shimano gear. Wonderful bike, comfortable over many days on trips through BC, Australia, and Cuba. Steel feels so much more alive, responsive, and comfortable compared to aluminum, more than making up for slightly reduced stiffness/efficiency.
Back issues now make drop handlebars problematic, and I keep thinking I should look into converting it into something a little more upright. My more recent trips have been on my daily driver, an aluminum frame hybrid with front & seat suspension. It does the job, but the romance is missing.
Fantastic post!
I have a silver 1980 Raleigh Competition GS. Purchased it new my sophomore year in college. Kept it ever since. It’s still in pretty decent shape, and I still ride it. Rides great, in fact. It could use a slight cosmetic refurb in a few areas, though. One thing I really want to replace, but can’t seem to source, are the badly deteriorating Weinmann gum rubber boots over the brake lever stanchions. Any ideas?
These are what I used which worked fine for my bike.
https://www.thebikesmiths.com/collections/brakes-all/products/dia-compe-cane-creek-standard-non-aero-hoods
Well, cool. That may have to do. Thank you for the info!
You won’t find anything original or original-styled anymore, the supplies of them died out around 10-12 years ago. As tbm3fan has posted, there are non-original alternatives that fit, primarily for Weinmann/DiaCompe levers. And back in the day they were known by another brand: Schwinn Approved.
Thanks! NLA is what I figured, but hoped to maybe find some NOS that somebody had stashed away.
Pardon my ignorance – I had no idea 27″ wasn’t the standard wheel size any more. My first bike was an old single speed freewheel Hartley my cousin resurrected from all the old junk under his house. It had 28″ wheels – they were getting uncommon by the sixties, and I got comments from my mates about the odd-looking wheels. One rim had the usual squarish profile, the other had a flatter rim with curved edges and a raised centre area where the spokes attached – I’m guessing that was an older style.
My daily commuter for many years (well, pre-COVID anyway) has been a ’65 Raleigh Sports – more or less the Slant 6 Dart of the bicycle world, but without the rust in the quarters. After decades of riding brittle bike boom 10-speeds and fussy mountain bikes, it was a revelation. I rack up 2-3k miles per year in all kinds of weather, and the time I spend on maintenance is vanishingly small compared to anything this side of a fixed-gear conversion. The bike is older than I am and will still be getting people around long after I’m gone. Modern bicycles are doubtless superior in any number of ways, but there’s a lot to be said for rugged simplicity when cheap, reliable transportation is the primary concern.
I’ve been watching Pekka Tahkola’s winter rides around Oulu, Finland on YouTube recently – he says he has 16 bikes, but around town he rides a 1937 Swedish single speed cruiser. Quite the beast :-).
The videos are beautiful.
My latest alley find, a 1983 Trek 520 54cm 18-speed. The only non-original part is the front tire. Made in Waterloo, Wisconsin, it rides like a dream.
Now I see how to remove a freewheel without having the proper tool. For this freewheel, a SunTour tool would’ve been helpful.
Yeah, I was cringing on that one. The one batch of tools I did pull out of the ashes and bead blasted back into usable shape was my freewheel, bottom bracket, and crankset tools. A lot of the are for components who’s manufacturers didn’t survive the 90’s, and have been out of production for decades.
That sucker was on tight naturally. The gear set battled me a fair amount with the correct tool to fit it. Almost broke the tool. But the next part wouldn’t budge till I used a long pipe wrench. The extra leverage actually turned it quite easily just like a long breaker bar on a car. Not a mark left. All the threads now have anti-seize on them.
The trick is to use the axle bolt to hold the tool down so it doesn’t slip.
I’ve done some repairs with improvised tools over the years, on bikes and cars. It is satisfying when it works, frustrating when the part gets damaged. Older bicycles can be especially troublesome, as Syke pointed out, due to defunct manufacturers and differing and sometimes idiosyncratic standards.
When I was engaged in my bike refurbishment enterprise, I limited myself to bikes made by major manufacturers since the 1990s to keep myself out of the twin rabbit holes of tool availability and parts incompatibility issues.
Check and adjust the tension on the spokes even though the wheels are true enough. Loose spokes will cause a wheel to go out of true faster and are at risk of breaking. Or even, the wheel cold ‘taco’ suddenly.
Interestingly the spoke was fine. It was the nipple that broke right at the base leaving the base inside the rim. That was a second hand bike I bought eight years ago and rode it with the slight wobble as I knew nothing about spokes. All this free time enabled me to acquire some knowledge in how to repair bikes and now cameras.
I had a bad tire on my upright cruiser which bent the rim out of shape. The bead failed; not enough to lose air, but enough to distort the rim. I ignored it until a spoke snapped. Of course the spoke was on the gearset side so I had to remove the cassette with my nephew’s cassette removal tool. Used a plumbing chainwrench to hold it tight.
Lesson learned: replace bad tires ASAP.
A great article, and timely also. Back surgery and the pandemic lockdown forced me to give up gym membership early last year. I resurrected my 1991 Specialized HardRock Cruz (the “Bel Air” version of the “Impala” HardRock) from the shed in April. I aired up the tires, oiled the chain and cleaned off the heavy dust accumulation.
I’ve ridden it over 3000 miles since April, and the only thing (so far) that broke was the original chain, which was easily replaced. I do need to take a look at the hub and bottom bracket bearings, but everything still spins smoothly and quietly.
And point taken Richard on the spokes. I once had a front wheel spoke break on an old cruiser and got tossed over the handlebars.
Ah yes, what a bicycle should be, in my opinion. I still miss my Schwinn Super LeTour 12.2 (the number referred to its weight in kilograms) that I bought in 1978 and was stolen in 1982.
Does anyone still make bikes with the kind of derailleurs that have no click stops, that you learn to shift by feel? It’s not quite the same difference as that between an automatic and a manual shift car, because there’s no “clutch”, but it was definitely satisfying to learn the skill of shifting to the next cog without overshooting it or getting hung up in between.
The difference between friction shifting that you describe, and the now ubiquitous index shifting lies in the shifter. I don’t know if any shifters are still made that give you the option, but you could find vintage ones if you look around. I have an early 1990s road bike with shifters that can be used as index or friction depending on the tension on the retaining screw.
Last year I sold an early 1990s set of mountain bike friction shifters that I have had laying around for many years. I remember being very happy to switch over to index shifters back in the day, though the early ones could be a bit of a pain to keep adjusted as the cable stretched and the housing flexed. I had a wee bit of nostalgic seller’s remorse after I sold them, though I couldn’t realistically foresee actually using them again.
Adding to the point of defunct manufacturers, I have a SunTour rear derailleur with right-side indexed shift lever for my bike. Both still work fine, but I assume Shimano will have to be used if and when replacements are needed.
Old Suntour stuff is still available in classifieds and on eBay. I sold some late 1980s Suntour derailleurs last year more than they cost when new.
And I’m one of those suckers who has paid above sticker for a well preserved Suntour setup from the 70s for a (mostly) period correct build-up on an old English Falcon. Good used components are still readily accessible, but ebay won’t be the cheapest way to find them. Bike shops that specialize in rehabbing older bikes often have piles of this stuff and can help make sure what you’re getting is compatible with your needs.
For the MadHungarian and 210delray there are still friction and ratchet shifters available from Microshift and retro specialists Rivendell and Velo Orange, plus lots of stuff on eBay. The Gevenalle retroshift may also be of interest as a way to mount a bar end shifter on a brake lever.
I have had to resort to eBay for my fleet of early 2000s mountain bikes as supplies of high grade 9 speed stuff have dried up. I suspect I should start hoarding Shimano XT cassettes or bow to the inevitable and plan a 10 speed conversion. On my wife’s beloved 2002 Trek MTB this is complicated by having the brake lever and shift lever combined so a 1×10 disk conversion would be complicated. It would also do away with the beautifully milled Bontrager chain rings so I’m in no hurry.