Here is actually the first bike that I rebuilt/restored, or more correctly, customized, as well as rebuilt in the last year. I did this one before I did the blue one. It is "restomized"(custom restoration), if you will. This is a bike that started out it's life in 1961 as a Schwinn Mark IV Jaguar 3 speed. It is an original Radiant Green bike, that I had to do a total repaint on the frame, as the original green paint was too badly scratched to save, so I had to entirely strip all the original paint off the frame, and redo it with another spray can match job that I found that matches the Radiant green candy metallic paint perfectly on the tank and chainguard, which basically, I was able to save, and just touch up. I finished, basically doing this bike in July of 2010. I was not able to get, and restore a nicer seat for the thing until December of that year. That is why some pictures of the bike show it with a darker, much more weathered seat than the other pictures do. The brighter green 1962 two rivet seat is the one that I have on the bike, now.
The main story about this bike is that I wanted a Mark IV Jaguar that has 5 speed derailleur gearing, but Schwinn never built such a bike from the factory back in the day. So, using the drivetrain parts from a 1965 Schwinn Collegiate 5 speed, I was able to figure out how to lace up the 5 speed axle hub to the fatter middleweight wheel rims, and put a derailleur with shifter on the bike to make it work. It took alot of tweaking and know how to make this kind of gearing to work on a bike like this. Usually, these bikes either came as coaster brake bikes, or as 3 speed models. No 5 speed option was offered on this model.
The premise was to make the bicycle look like that Schwinn DID build it, complete with the special decal 5 speed designation decal graphics that I custom made for the bike. As you saw on one of my first posts that I did, Schwinn did make a 5 speed middleweight bike in 1961-1962, and you saw that in that post, that I restored one of these in 2003. That bike , of course is the limited run 5 speed Schwinn Corvette. I think I did that post in September of 2009. The only difference in between the Corvette, and the Jaguar, was the big frame tank, and the added rear rack, which makes this bike a very beautiful fully dressed bike, to use a touring motorcycle term, if you will. The added derailleur gearing makes this heavy bike a little more responsive on the pedals, as the low gear is actually lower than the three speed hub's low gear is, making it easier to pedal up hill on this bike. Because of the tank, the shifter that is on the top bar of the 5 speed Corvette had to be replaced with a shifter that mounts on the handlebar stem, so that it is out of the way of the tank. This lets the fully enclosed shifter cable free to run down the down tube, over the crank housing, and back to the derailleur, without anything getting in the way on its placing there, on the bottom of the frame. This is the only custom bike that I will probably ever build, as this is the only bike I wanted from Schwinn, that they never built in this configuration. Pretty much everything else about this bike is 100% factory, and period correct as to how Schwinn built this bike in 1961. New for 1960 and 1961 was the new Delta made "Roadlighter" ball headlight, which replaced the Italian made "CEV"headlights of 1959, and prior to that. So the headlightI have on this bike is correct for this era, also, according to the Schwinn literature of the day. Here are the images, of this "restomized" bike. The top picture is an image my daughter took of me with this bike back on May 28th of this year,(2011).
Jim.
