I had a blast rebuilding and customizing my little hot rod cruiser bike so I was already itching to build another. It didn’t seem fair for me to have a cool thing and for Jason to not have a cool thing… so it’s his turn! While we were out west on a road trip in the camper I found him a genuine New Belgium Ale special edition Felt cruiser. He really liked the shape of the frame on the Felt bikes and we lucked into one for cheap because it wasn’t “original.” Apparently these were only sold to long time New Belgium employees in limited quantities. But… it wouldn’t be the first time I cut up a nice thing so… let’s begin!
So here’s what we’ve got: skinny wheels where the red doesn’t match the frame, ugly white fenders, huge “comfort” seat, and swept back high rise bars. This is not the look that we’re going for.
A quick flip of the handlebars upside down and a leftover mountain bike seat and she’s looking a lot more sporty!
Cute, but no. Time to strip it.
This bike is a 2008 so she’s in much better running shape than my little bike. The build on this one is going to be mostly aesthetic. The look Jason likes is the early board tracker look with dropped handlebars, leather seat, and white tires. I’m going to start with the frame. Ordinarily I would paint it but since the New Belgium frame is apparently “a thing” I’m going to leave the paint scheme but sand it and weather it so it’s not as red (neither of us like red) and so it looks much much older. I started with the sander but realized that when a bike has red paint over white primer that it quickly turns PINK. And that, my friends, will just not do. Once I got the sanding down to where I thought it looked nice I added a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, vinegar, and salt to flash rust the bare steel. This works awesome if you ever need to rust something quickly. The next step was to wash something darker over the paint and cover up the pink. I only have 3 colors of 1-shot lettering enamel so I mixed black with “fake gold” which turned into this amazing dirty metal black that looked just like old grease. It couldn’t have been more perfect so I applied that with a shop towel.
Here it is with the finished paint and rust (ha!) and a seat I got off Amazon.
Jason and I went to a bike parts sale in Bentonville and got a new, lower stem and better handlebars. I had some brown cork bar tape already for some reason so I installed that as well.
Now that the frame is more of a burgundy, the bright red wheels (that are much narrower than factory) look hideous. I hadn’t planned on spending a lot of money on this bike but baby needs new shoes. She now had black wheels, 3 speed geared hub in the rear, and meaty cream-colored tires.
Jason hated how the seat I got him rode so I returned it and got him a fancy new Brooks leather saddle. He was happy because the color was prettier.
Next up are the fenders and chain guard. The full fenders looked terrible but I thought that a short bobbed fender on the rear tire would look nice so I took the grinder to it. For paint I stripped it all off, then rubbed the same greasy black mixture over the bare metal. Amazingly, it turned out perfect. I even splattered it a little to look like grease splats.
This bike didn’t need much. I polished the crank and any other shiny bits, set up the shifter, PY he chain back on and Jason was ready to ride!
My little cruiser is actually terrifying to ride. Everyone has fond memories of banana seats and coaster brakes but like… we were children. As an adult this is the least safe I’ve ever felt on a bicycle. Jason’s bike, on the other hand, rides like a dream! It’s fast, efficient, and comfortable! We definitely don’t match as a pair when we go out, but we get a lot of looks! We rode the cruisers out to Coler and downtown Bentonville to get some ice cream and explore.
