Needing a New Bike
Over the last few years, every six month or so, the old can you put the seat up for me Dad? would be heard, and of course I'd oblige. But a little while back there was no more seat post to work with, so we started thinking about a new bike.
Rebecca wasn't originally sold on the idea of a non-new bike, but some time spent inputting at the design stage helped. For example, you may guess that her favourite colour is blue, and I would have gone with down tube friction shifters, but Bec had her heart set on 'gears on the handlebars'.
Wanting to keep things easy, we've gone with a simple 1x5 set up with a 32 cog on the rear to ensure the lack of a small ring on the front isn't missed.
I think the jury is still out a little w.r.t the retro styling (particularly the saddle), but I think we're OK with that now too.
Old, New, Borrowed....
The '83 Apollo was a garage sale find. Original parts retained include the frame, bars, BB, and brake levers. New are the wheels and tyres, saddle, grips, rear cluster, cables and outers, (plus a few small parts such as seat post bolts, and some colour scheme compliant chain ring bolts).
From the parts bin, are the Suntour Superbe cranks and Honour derailleur, thumb shifter, pedals, weinmann brakes and headset - all cleaned, re-greased and polished to within an inch of their lives!
Old alloy parts clean up well with some TLC.
... and Blue.
The paint is new, electric blue pearl on a shade of sky blue (mixed up from the same electric blue pearl) with a blue 'ghost' pearl over the top.
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We were really pleased with the paint finish, particularly the crisp interface between the colours.
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| The ghost blue only shows from certain angles but looks great when it does. |
The pattern on the stem was a bit of an experiment that turned out better than expected!
The Mechanics
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