The Art of the Sympathetic Restoration, Part 1/c The Components and Wheel Set and those Brakes!

 

Up next was the job of slowing going through the components, cleaning and degreasing, dealing with rust where needed and the polishing, waxing and reassembling.

 

Strangely I had so far somehow missed what turned out to be the most interesting item on the bike, the rear "GEM" brake set, which after a bit of internet detective work, turns out to be of Australian origin, and judging by the lack of internet information and presence, I would say quite a rare item.

Here are the "GEM" brakes, which are clamped onto the rear seat stays, the brake arms themselves act as the brake spring...not that successfully as it turns out!

the wheel set as always, turned out to be one of the most time consuming parts of the entire project, as you can see they were in pretty poor condition, though luckily none of the rust had actually gone through the rims.

I had to cut the perished tyres off the rimes..first time I have had to do this.

The bottom bracket had obviously not seen a mechanics tool for quite a while...

 

 Here is the B/B shell after following the steps outlined in the previous post