'67 Schwinn Twinn restore — Higher Ground 4x4

Nov 12, 2012 06:08 PM #1

So a double bike has been sitting around in family storage for years, moving from house to house from Louisiana to here. Originally it was a birthday present to my mother's brother's wife when she was 8ys old. They passed it to us when they moved out of country along with a fish tank and other junk they didn't know what to do with. It's been sitting unused on crumbly dry rotted tires for at least 15yrs and before that it didn't move much either. I had it my mind to get it rolling again and recently found good reason to fill both seats.

I brought it over to my house and began working on it in without the intended back seat applicant knowing.
I researched on the internet the best ways to clean chrome and came up with the consensus being that it scratches easily even with fine steel wool. I found a video on removing rust from chrome with just wet aluminum foil. It sounded far fetched but I figured a $4 roll of aluminum foil couldn't hurt. It turned out working miraculously. It took many hours of elbow grease but everything but the deep pitted rust spots in a couple spots came completely out. Just fold foil, wet, and rub, until no more rust.

Anyway I had to bring the wheels into a shop because a few spokes were missing and the others were loose. They tightened them and trued the wheel up, also cleaning up the inside bearings that were almost catching and rolling slow. I went with some new white walls for the tires.

They tried to sell me a light that looked good for a mountain bike but didn't fit the chrome and old paint look. I found a LED chrome bullet style light on ebay/amazon that looked like a better fit so I got it.

I got it back together and shined up waiting in the front room for when I picked up Noel at the airport last week for her to see it first. She loved it and we took it out for a quick spin around the block. It takes a hair of getting used to, like pulling a trailer. You have to be communicative with your starts and stops, especially since each rider's pedals are connected to the other's.

Last Sunday I drove over to her place downtown and we rode to church stopping for coffee along the way. It was about 6mi/25min and a nice brisk morning for it. We got a lot of looks, especially at the park and lunch spot on the way back. You could hear people talking about it as we rode on. It really was fun and we got the technique down pretty awesomely.