~1970 Mixte Raleigh Sprite Restoration, Day One:
Approximately 2.5 man hours, not including strolling around Fred Meyer looking for tools and buying Dr. Pepper and Hostess chocolate mini-donuts.
Total project hours to-date: 2.5
At this point, the bike is disassembled minus the crankset, bottom bracket, and headset. I had to get a few tools to further the cause. I found a great paint stripping attachment for a drill chuck, which I tested out on the downtube.
Challenges today: getting the chainring bolts off. They were very soft and the corners got chewed up with the slightest force. I managed to get two of them out, but the third precipitated my buying the Vise Grip, with which I was able to get a sufficient purchase on the bolt to remove it. Another difficulty is/will be the cottered cranks. I gave it a gentle go with the method I've seen on the blogosphere, but nothing happened (other than some dents in the cotter head.) So... I'm going to have to use the escalating severities described by Sheldon Brown on "Retro Raleighs".
Incidentally, on my Mac at home I can't format my posts very cleanly; thus the pictures not lined up, the text all over the place, etc. etc. Not a big deal, but I'm an obsessive formatter/fontist/layout perfectionist. Oh well for me.
