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1972 Schwinn |
| I found
this 1972 Sports Tourer in Opaque Blue on eBay as a frame and parts. It
went pretty cheap, as it was not complete and it looked pretty rough. Parts
that came with the bike included brakes, crank, front derailleur, handlebar,
stem, headset and crankset. I cleaned up the frame, touched up the paint,
cleaned up the chrome and raided my stash of old parts, finding many appropriate
giblets that I had accumulated over the years. Perhaps the best find was
a seatpost clamp that is correct for the bike, and was missing. Or, mabe
it's the Schwinn-Approved ratchet shifters I used to replace the awful Twin-Stick
units that came stock. After all, those exact barcons were available as
an extra cost option when the bike was new. It was actually made in November
of 1971 as a 1972 model.
I found a suitable GB stem with the Schwinn "S" logo that was a better length along with a set of replacement GB Randonneur bars to go with it. Someone had tried to flatten out the original bars and had created a misshapen mass out of them. I was happy that the bike came with the correct front changer, as these are harder to find than the Gran Tourismo rear. While the Campy GT is known as one of the world's all-time worst derailleurs, it does work ok when setup properly and was what the bike came with originally. The Huret rear dropout had actually been modified at the factory to fit this changer. The bike had led a rough life in storage, but had very few miles on it, judging from the lack of wear on the parts. I fitted an old set of Campy steel pedals to it with Schwinn Approved AVA toe clips. The original pedals would have been Union quills that quickly loosened up, creaked and usually died an early death. The Bluemels fenders are suitably ratty and the Blackburn rack has since been replaced by a cheesy Schwinn-Approved copy of the equally cheesy Pletscher rack. Schwinn promoted the ST as having the widest gear ratio of any 10 speed in its day, but I decided to forgo trying to find one of those 34 tooth inch-pitch freewheels that came with it and threw on a 14-30 Atom freewheel that I found in the archives instead.
The images are thumbnails, so click away! |
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