My Butt Hurts!

So my two biggest pet peeves when it comes to riding a bike are 1) a rock hard seat; and 2) a seat that leaks. Being as this particular seat is a Selle Royal mattress saddle (suspended on springs like a mattress; see below) the former is not really a big issue - the seat is rather comfortable. You may think these seats look ugly, but I'd rather an ugly comfortable seat than an awesome seat and hemroids :) Besides, this one's 'vintage' (read: cool).

This seat had some scuffs and tears on the sides, and wasn't up to my standards so I decided to look on eBay for a replacement. Turns out that these seats aren't actually THAT popular. Forget about getting a new one, and a decent used one fetches around $50+shipping, which is more than I'm willing to pay for a used seat. So I decided to try my hand at rebuilding it.

The frame had substantial amounts of surface rust, which is very unsightly, so that would have to get cleaned up. I decided in the end to just paint the whole frame since it was impractical/impossible to clean all the surface rust off the springs etc.

After drilling out 6 rivets that held the seat to the frame, off it came:

The top of the frame was actually in very good condition; too bad no one sees the top when the seat is mounted on it. Oh well, paint it is!

I painted the seat frame with gloss black TREMCLAD rust paint. This stuff is amazing. It sticks to anything, and leaves an awesome finish. AND it's cheap (~$6/can).

The next step was to disassemble the entire seat cushion. This involved cutting through the stiching along the periphery of the seat that held the vinyl seat cover to the moulded plastic seat.

After the stiches were removed, I had to peel off the vinyl seat cover that had been glued in place. This wasn't too difficult as the glue was quite old, and came off easily.

Removal of the vinyl covering exposes the underpadding which consists of a thin sheet of foam covering what appeared to be very similar to carpet underpadding (the omelette coloured stuff in the pic below). Thankfully, the foam padding and underpadding was in very good condition, so I was able to reuse it, instead of cutting out new foam. Since the seat is spring loaded anyway, this shouldn't affect the comfort significantly at all.

New materials for rebuilding the seat/general bike rebuilding. Average cost of each item in this picture was $6. This includes: Tremclad Red Oxide Primer (have yet to use this cause the paint sticks so well without it), 2 cans of glossy black, 1 can of clear (for clear coat tests later), 1m^2 each of black textured vinyl and white textured vinyl, and about 0.5m^2 of thick foam - which I didn't need after all.

I then cut out the seat parts after tracing them onto the new vinyl sheet that I purchased. Using our sewing machine, I stiched the sides and top together carefully. Since the bike is going to be black with white accents, I thought it only appropriate to make the seat two-toned. I think it looks much better than the stock seat did in solid black.

This is just a hand held test fitting to see roughly what the seat will look like. It will look much better than this in reality because the vinyl will be stretched around the moulded plastic seat.

I decided to use contact cement (also about $6) to glue the vinyl to the moulded plastic seat. It is really good for this application since it bonds instantly, and is flexible when dry. And it smells good; which is a bonus since I like huffing glue...just kidding :P I clamped the seat cover on before glueing it to make sure it was aligned properly. Then I glued it bit by bit.

With contact cement, you apply some to both surfaces you want to join, let it dry, and then (within an hour or so), you join the two faces together for a secure bond.

Work in progress...check out the nicely painted steel seat frame!

The seat was entirely glued yesterday, and I'm letting it set all day today before removing the clamps (just to be sure since the vinyl is under tension; I don't want to take any risks of it loosening up). Tomorrow I'm going to take it to the local shoe repair guy who said he can probably recreate the stiching around the periphery of the saddle (through the plastic and all). I hope he can...I'll post the final pics of the seat as soon as it is finished!

Distraction

So I was about to eat dinner a couple days ago when I looked out the window and saw something out of place on my neighbour's roof. After we told them about it, they tried throwing a tennis ball at it to get it down...to no avail. I'm not sure how they got it down in the end, but it's gone now...here are some pics!

Learning how to conterfeit....

So I've been slacking a little on this bike build, but in my defense I've had other things (like broken down cars) to take care of...and I figured that since I got injured after a (literal) 'run-in' with the first baseman during my softball game last night, I'd spend some time reproducing the decals that are found on the bike.

Unfortunately, I was unable to locate any similar decals online ANYWHERE, and so I had to resort to making my own. I've never done this so we'll see how it turns out.

You can purchase printable onable waterslide decal paper at any print shop (so I am told...) though I was unable to find any locally, so instead I purchased Applique paper (I have no clue what this is, seems like a giant paper sized sheet of scotch tape stuff that you can print on) at the local arts/craft store. Next it was time to start recreating the decals...I've only started, but here's what I have so far:

This is one of the (many) damaged decals that requires replacing. I've taken a picture of it, and am using Adobe Illustrator to recreate a decal that is as similar to this as possible (given that I don't have ALL the details since this decal is partially scratched off...). Since the bike will be painted black, I have modified the original decal slightly to achieve a more contrasting effect, and to avoid any black-on-black.

So I've been slacking a little bit with this but here is the 'Made in England' decal (original and re-created):

The font is close enough for me. And the scale is pretty good too, though that is relatively easy to play with when printing.

I still have the B.S.A logo, the chain guard decal, and the 'New Hudson' lettering, but that shouldn't be too hard:

^ B.S.A Logo ^

^ Chain guard emblems ^

^ 'New Hudson' text ^

Oh yeah...I also have to do something about the head badge (which was non existant...). It will probably be similar to the 'arm & hammer' logo I've made already. I'll post the finished decals here when I finish them.

I Feel Like An Archeologist

It was obvious to me that someone had painted the fenders and the chain guard with black paint in a rather poor fashion, and I wanted to clean it off so that I could see the "New Hudson" decal hiding beneath it. I started with steel wool, but after noticing how thick the layer of black paint was (ok, it wasn't very thick, but thick enough to take an eternity to get through with steel wool) I decided to resort to a rather crude method: the knife.

Actually, this method worked quite well at removing the top layer of black paint while leaving the white paint below it intact. I presume this is because when the top layer of paint was applied, the person probably neglected to prepare the painting surface, and so the black paint just flaked off with the pass of the knife. I continued to gently scrape away the paint, and discovered the hidden decal, and couldn't help but feel like an archeologist at a dig, discovering an old fossil.

Now all that remains is to see if I can purchase similar or identical decals on eBay or somewhere...

The Cleaning Begins...

Eager to get to work restoring the New Hudson to it's former glory as a birthday present for my girlfriend, I got my can of Gunk Engine Degreaser (great stuff!) and some medium steel wool and got to work on the chrome handle bars, and the rear brake caliper. There was quite a lot of surface rust on the components, and I was a little worried that they wouldn't clean up nicely, but it turns out they cleaned up much better than anticipated!

The handlebars had a generous amount of surface rust and the Gunk really worked well in combination with the steel wool. It's not very nice on your hands though...neither is the steel wool...I'll wear gloves next time...

The finished product looks amazing! And this probably only took about 15 min of elbow grease, and $0. So far this project looks like it will be able to be completed rather frugally :)

I will buff the handlebars and other components with polishing compound before I re-assemble the bike. It will give it a shine that will last for a while to come. Of course, being a 48 year old bike, it has it's share of scuffs and scratches that won't get buffed out, but they're not very noticeable and if anything, add to the vintage character of the bike. Next came the rear brake lever and caliper. They look in rough rusty shape, but the surface rust came right off!

And voila! All in an evenings work. I would've cleaned the remaining lever and caliper but my hands were hurting from the steel wool fragments that embedded themselves in my fingertips. Gloves for sure next time.

This is the stuff I used to clean the components and it works as a penetrant to loosen stubborn bolts. There weren't any stubborn bolts on this bike...or maybe that's the penetrant working...?

Dismemberment

I finally got around to dis-assembling the bike today. The general idea will be to take everything apart, let it sit in degreasing solution for a while, clean it up/replace necessary components, and replace. The frame will be stripped of paint using paint stripper, prepared, primed and painted (colour TBD). Not sure how I'm going to deal with the decals yet. The markings on the bicycle indicate that it is a New Hudson, which I've learned was a division of B.S.A which became owned by Raleigh in 1957 and markings on the Sturmey Archer hub indicate that it is from 1962. I've had serious difficulty finding anything relating to New Hudson 3-speeds online; most of the information deals with mopeds and motorcycles from the early 20th century. If anyone finds any useful information (ie: catalogues, original paint colour variants, trim colours, decals, etc) please let me know.

The rims will need a thorough cleaning, or may have to be replaced...

All the bicycle parts have been boxed up and ready to be taken downstairs to my workshop for cleaning, painting, and general refurbishment...

It appears as though the fenders were originally white, and someone painted over them at some point with black Tremclad (or similar)...

Also, if anyone knows where I can get the decals below I'd really appreciate it :)



The retro looking chain guard resembles those found on Skidstar or Speedwell bikes, but has "New Hudson" embossed, or it's a decal; I'll find out more when I strip the layers of paint. I'm not sure how the lettering on this chain guard is supposed to look, so if anyone finds any pictures I'd really appreciate them showing me.

I'll post more pictures of the individual components as I start taking them apart and cleaning them.