Category Archives: Old Things

Ride on

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My handsome steed is shod in some brand new rubber! Thanks to the fine folks at Western Bikeworks on NW 17th and 21st Avenue Bicycles (I hope you can guess where they are) are due for the help in getting everything I needed. Got Panaracers with a sweet tan sidewall (over new rim tape and tubes) and Continental Kool Stop brake pads to replace the disintegrating Specialized Touring II tires and what might be the original (and now rock hard) Dia Compe brake pads.

The Western folks actually guided me to 21st when they didn’t have the brake pads I needed in stock, after giving me a great deal on the rest of the stuff. I balked at the price of the pads at 21st initially, but it turns out they’d actually have set me back way more online with shipping, so score two for the local bike shops!

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I managed to use up half of my patch kit mounting the new tires. It took me a few tries to discover the trick to getting the bead over the rim without prodigal tire lever usage. Gotta make sure the rest of the bead is in the ‘valley’ of the rim to give you as much slack as possible! On the plus side I’m an ace at applying patches now, and the practice was cheap.

Finally…

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So I’ve been saying I’d get a bike for… A long time. Since before I moved to Portland even, when I was living in a far less bike friendly part of the world. It just kinda never happened.

I finally filled the bike shaped void in my life today, with a mid-70s Centurion Super LeMans. It showed up in Goodwill, which isn’t usually a good sign, but it’s in extraordinary shape and seems to be almost completely original. It’s outfitted with Sakae Randonneur, Suntour, and Dia Compe parts mainly, with a few Pletscher accessories. Rides on a pair of Araya 27×1.25 wheels with Specialized Touring II tires mounted (I think these are from the 80s? They still hold air but I don’t trust them given how the sidewalls look.)

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I think this deserves a more complete post once I go through it for real, but I was super excited to share!

Find of the Week

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The Bins yield odd treasure. This time it was a late-50s vintage McGraw Electric Co. Toastmaster model 1C5. I couldn’t turn it down for three bucks.

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Three slots for toast seemed a little bit odd, and I found out this model is actually kinda rare. Apparently they made three slot toasters for a brief period to cash in on the popularity of the club sandwich. Who knew?

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This one didn’t seem to have been used much, but I still took it apart and cleaned it up. The bottom door was held closed with a few pieces of electric tape but it just needed to be adjusted a little bit to catch the latch.

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The automatic release mechanism is way more complex that I would have assumed. Was also interested to find that the heating elements are woven around some kind of fibrous board of some sort. Hopefully nothing now known to be toxic…

Some links I found while researching it:
Garage Sale Finds – Odd Man Out
Toaster.org collection featuring the same model with black trim
Fluff article about a toaster collector, mentioning their unusual three slot toaster