My old Webco

So, I picked up my bikes from being painted and they both look pretty sweet! I have the 650b klunker bike 99% finished, but I realized in building it up that the bottom bracket I have isn't going to fit, so I'm a few more days out till it's complete.

 These are a couple shots of the klunker bike mocked up before painting. I had just purchased tires and I wanted to see how it would look and fit .

The story of my Webco is pretty crazy. Around 1977 or so, I had been seeing kids riding around on these motocross type bikes. I previously had an AMF Superbee that was kind of a muscle type bike like a Schwinn stingray. It had the high rise bars and banana seat. At some point in the mid 70's, kids started modifying the bikes to a more BMX style. My AMF got stolen, and so after a year or so of not having a bike, I really wanted a BMX bike, preferably a Mongoose.
I remember my dad taking us around to some different bike shops. I saw lots of bikes I really liked, but everything was out of our price range.
One day, my dad came home with a used bike he bought from someone he worked with. I think it was my birthday, but I'm not 100% sure. The bike was a kind of rough, but it had been tricked out a little. It had Redline forks and Skyway tuff wheels! I thought it was awesome! It was the bike I learned how turn a wrench on. I tore it down to the bare frame at least 3 times to repaint it. It was also the bike I learned how to jump on, and start racing with.
Over the next few years I tricked it out even more adding Redline V-bars, Redline stem, Araya alloy wheels, MX-1000 brake, Takagi alloy cranks, KKT lightning pedals and a Kashimax seat. Eventually after we got more into racing, I got a Redline proline frame set and retired the old Webco. Honestly, it was beyond time. I had broken the frame and had it re-welded, as well as it looked like it had been broken and repaired twice before I got it.
We ended up selling it at our bike shop probably around 1983-84, but it was one of those sentimental things that I kind of wished I had held onto.

Anyway, fast forward to 2016. A friend of mine sent me some blurry photos of some frames he had just acquired, and wanted to know if I knew what kind of bikes they were.

 I told him the chrome one looked like an old Team Murray and the other was an old Webco. I asked if he could send some more pictures and if he would be interested in selling it. I had been somewhat looking to find an old Webco, mainly as a template to build a modern day cruiser type klunker frame that I had planned on building next. Upon looking at more pics, I thought there was a good chance this was my ACTUAL old bike due to the colors of the paint layers.I ended up trading him some old parts for the frame.

The bike was in pretty poor condition, but this is my old bike!

 I have no idea how this frame survived this long.

I found some reproduction decals on ebay that were just like the originals. I removed a seatpost that was broken off and stuck inside the frame, straightened and aligned the back end, welded the hole I drilled in the brake bridge, and cleaned up some of the ugly welds. After I got the Klunker build finished, I took both bikes in to my buddy Brent to be painted. He painted both frames the same color, which is very close to the original red that was on the Webco to start with.

I think it came out really nice! 

I may end up building it up as a complete someday, but for now it's just going to hang on the wall and look cool.

This is a short video I made. It's part 3 of the restoration process.

I've done a handful of the Wheeler crits so far this year. I finally got on the podium a couple of weeks ago in the masters category. This year has been all over the place as far as my fitness goes, but I'm trying to peak for the ProAm coming up in a few weeks.