1974 Schwinn Varsity – Lightweight, 10 Speeds, Campus Green – Conversion to single speed while keeping the original vintage look and feel of the bike.
This project was added when I bought a second Varsity for the hubs. My original plan was to relace 700c rims onto the vintage hubs. I wanted to do this so I could have all options available for tires, primarily the cyclocross tire option! In a strange twist of events after we finished relacing the wheels from the standard Schwinn 4 cross to new DT SS spokes in a 3 cross (36 hole) pattern, using what we thought were 700c rims, it turns out the rims were mis-labeled and were actually 27 inch. We could have torn this wheel set down and got new rims, but instead it only seemed right to just go ahead and use these wheels on this bike instead of the training bike I was originally slating these for. Michelin makes a nice smooth street tire in 27” and these along with some new tubes were installed.
The frameset had a few minor modifications:
• Brazed on 2 sets of water bottle bosses, one on the down tube and the other on the seat tube.
• Removed all the shifter cable brackets.
• Powdercoat -Sparkle Granny Smith, similar color to original green
Several challenges come about when wanting to keep/reuse as many original parts as possible. The most significant was my desire to keep the 1-piece Astabula crankset, however I did not want to keep the stock pedals, I wanted a clipless options. This presented the problem that 1 piece cranks only have ½”-20 threads, whereas all of today’s clipless pedals are made to fit 3 piece cranks with 9/16” -20 threads. Here’s the solution: I bought a standard combo spd clipless/platform pedal, these combo pedals are made by intro level (cheap) parts suppliers like Wellgo or Suntour, these were of course 9/16 thread, then I bought some ½ platform only pedals of a similar style and manufacturer. If you know anything about manufacturing (especially when you want the parts to be cheap) you design things to use common parts! So it was no surprise when I pulled the axes out of each pedal and they were the same except for the threading! Swapped the axles problem solved!
I’m sure I’ll get booed by the fixed gear crowd here; next I removed the 5 speed external cassette and replaced it with a single 16 free wheel gear. The gear ratio ends up being 39-16, this is because I am keeping the stock front (small) chain ring and 16 is as small as I could get on the back, overall not a bad combo, considering the tires are 27 inch.
Another interesting vintage appeal to the bike is that I kept the rear wheel “pie plate” (spoke chain guard) if you thought that chrome plate was huge before, it’s really big now that there is only a lonely (and small) single gear back there!
This project was added when I bought a second Varsity for the hubs. My original plan was to relace 700c rims onto the vintage hubs. I wanted to do this so I could have all options available for tires, primarily the cyclocross tire option! In a strange twist of events after we finished relacing the wheels from the standard Schwinn 4 cross to new DT SS spokes in a 3 cross (36 hole) pattern, using what we thought were 700c rims, it turns out the rims were mis-labeled and were actually 27 inch. We could have torn this wheel set down and got new rims, but instead it only seemed right to just go ahead and use these wheels on this bike instead of the training bike I was originally slating these for. Michelin makes a nice smooth street tire in 27” and these along with some new tubes were installed.
The frameset had a few minor modifications:
• Brazed on 2 sets of water bottle bosses, one on the down tube and the other on the seat tube.
• Removed all the shifter cable brackets.
• Powdercoat -Sparkle Granny Smith, similar color to original green
Several challenges come about when wanting to keep/reuse as many original parts as possible. The most significant was my desire to keep the 1-piece Astabula crankset, however I did not want to keep the stock pedals, I wanted a clipless options. This presented the problem that 1 piece cranks only have ½”-20 threads, whereas all of today’s clipless pedals are made to fit 3 piece cranks with 9/16” -20 threads. Here’s the solution: I bought a standard combo spd clipless/platform pedal, these combo pedals are made by intro level (cheap) parts suppliers like Wellgo or Suntour, these were of course 9/16 thread, then I bought some ½ platform only pedals of a similar style and manufacturer. If you know anything about manufacturing (especially when you want the parts to be cheap) you design things to use common parts! So it was no surprise when I pulled the axes out of each pedal and they were the same except for the threading! Swapped the axles problem solved!
I’m sure I’ll get booed by the fixed gear crowd here; next I removed the 5 speed external cassette and replaced it with a single 16 free wheel gear. The gear ratio ends up being 39-16, this is because I am keeping the stock front (small) chain ring and 16 is as small as I could get on the back, overall not a bad combo, considering the tires are 27 inch.
Another interesting vintage appeal to the bike is that I kept the rear wheel “pie plate” (spoke chain guard) if you thought that chrome plate was huge before, it’s really big now that there is only a lonely (and small) single gear back there!
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