Staying with our inadvertent theme ‘Blending Old with New’, this is Daniel V’s better than new 1986 Schwinn Prelude. Nicely executed.
1986 Schwinn Prelude
I picked up a dusty old frame from a small shop that had piles of old bikes in the back of the building. I had it media-blasted down to the bare metal and then it got powder coated with antique white followed by a couple clear, sealing coats. This is the second bike project I’ve gone into thinking I’ll just get it riding smooth with minimal investment, then turned around and sourced many expensive NOS and era-specific parts — spending way more than I should have. The end result though is one exceptional ride on a classic steel Schwinn. I don’t plan on ever selling this bike!
Here are the current specs: White powder coated 62cm lugged steel frame made from Columbus Tenax tubing on main triangle and Tange steel fork (I hand-painted the lug detail trim with red enamel paint), Suntour BarCon shifters, Suntour Cyclone front & rear der., Suntour Superbe Pro crankset 53/42, Phil Wood bottom bracket, 7-speed cassette 12-28, Fulcrum Racing 7 wheels with Continental Ultra Gatorskin tires, NOS DiaCompe “SVX” brakes, Cane Creek SCR-5 brake levers, Brooks Professional saddle, Laprade aero seatpost, really beautiful Modolo stem, Modolo Anatomica bars (just added the new Fizik microtex dual tape—comfortable!, red Jagwire cables, a red Chris King 2Nut headset and some red Nashbar spd-style pedals. I recreated the Schwinn logo in Illustrator and had a friend from a sign shop output new decals cut from red vinyl (see detail shot) They are made of a lot of tiny little pieces and were quite a process to recreate and to plot out and place on the frame. Also, Columbus didn’t have any original Columbus Tenax decals that originally came on my bike, so they were nice enough to mail me a sheet of red oval Columbus bird decals. Thanks so much for providing a great site to showcase old ten-speeds (even though mine is now a 14-speed — hope that doesn’t disqualify my post!)
Note: I’ve included a photo of another person’s ’86 Prelude to show what the color scheme of my actual frame looked like before I did my custom rebuild.
Thanks Daniel