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bigshape
Bit of a long term project brought to completion this week.
It's my late granddad's Flying Scot.
We (my dad and I) have had the bike for a while, my dad got it repainted at Bob Jackson probably around 15-20 years ago and did a bit of a resto on it then. Since then it developed rust holes under the chainstays so I initially welded them up and then more recently (but still a couple years ago) replaced the entire rear triangle and changed it from forward facing horizontal dropouts to track ends as I figured I'd have a lot more fun with it as a Path type bike than with gears.
It sat with a new rear end on it but nothing else done to it for a while and with lockdowns last/this year I've found the time to finish it off.
It's far from a faithful Flying Scot resto but I like to think that I've tastefully added a bit of my own flair to it.
The new rear triangle obviously destroyed the nice BJ paintjob and I did at first think about just repainting the rear end and trying to blend it in somehow but with changing the dropouts to track ends it meant the downtube shifter bosses were redundant so I whipped them off and figured since the front triangle paint was now buggered I was in for a penny so may as well get in for a pound so I redid the toptube cable routing (it was on the side of the top before) and I added two sets of bottle bosses.
It used to have a white headtube and white panel on the seattube with gold lining but when we got it from my grandad he had brush painted it with house emulsion paint so I feel like going back to a brush painted finish is actually a nice touch.
As for build kit, the original wheels were beyond saving when my dad did the first resto on the bike and he had built it up with 700c wheels. I got these 27" wheels a while later. I still had the original front and rear mechs but they are now surplus to req. The old dt shfters had been replaced with what I think are C-Record ones which I'm now selling. I have the cranks, a set of cottered Stronglights but no bb so if I can figure out what to buy I'll put them back on it. The original brakes were GB Coureur calipers and GB Superhood levers. One of the calipers was pretty past it and got dumped at some stage, Iwas going to use the other parts but I recently found an old Halfords International flytipped at the side of a road and it had these Mafacs on it which I know will work a bit better than sidepulls so went for these. Deciding to fit these meant I had to sort out a rear cable stop and I did a one sided one which was another step away from being a faithful original restoration but hey!
I know the Flying Scot fan boys (are any of them actually boys, I think they are all grumpy old men) would be appalled by this but I don't think my grandad was one of them, I think he just had a Scot because he lived in Glasgow and they were what was available. Hopefully he'd just be happy the old bike had been made usable again.