J.C. Higgins Bicycle - Classic Pedal sports Edition

There's probably more appropriate forums to post this on, bike-centric people who might be more into this sort of stuff, but GRM is a known quantity and I feel like there's maybe a handful of folks here who might be interested in this, or possibly even helpful.  

Several decades ago, when I was a boy, my brother and I used to go over to our Grandparents' house after church on Sunday. Our parents would have coffee and donuts with my dad's parents, and my brother and I would see what mischief we could get ourselves into at their house. "Me Ma and Pa", as we called them, had an assortment of ancient (even then), rusting, barely-functioning wagons, bikes, trikes, and other toys that we unsympathetically thrashed about (as kids do) and banged into each other with.  Which was all great fun.  

About 10 years ago Pa died (his wife predeceased him by almost 20 years, amazingly) and in cleaning out his old house, I ended up with what remained of the old rusty wheeled things we used to bang about on back in the 1980s.  Having tons of other projects going on, they got stashed in my barn, hung up, covered, and forgotten. 

A few weeks ago Mrs. VCH and I were talking, and she mentioned she'd like an old cruiser style bike to ride around while our kids were riding their bikes. And I remembered one of the bikes from my grandparents' stash, and suggested maybe we see if it was still rideable. 

For the first time in 10 years, this saw the light of day:

I put some air into the tires, and they held...sort of.  The front tire may be the original one- as in, the one that came on the bike new. It split, and went crooked, but I did pedal the bike up the driveway and back to confirm it did function. Overnight, the inner tube popped and took with it the tire. No matter, new ones were already on order...

I asked my dad last night if he knew anything of the history of this bike.  He said he wasn't sure...it was just him and his brother, no sisters, so where a woman's bike appeared from was an unknown- it wasn't my grandmother's, either.  Possibly it was just an old discarded bike my grandfather picked up off the side of the road somewhere.  This tracks on a lot of levels- the bike seems to be missing a tank, a headlight, the chain guard, and the reinforcing bracket that goes around the trailing edge of the rear fender, so it may have been cannibalized for parts at some point or maybe just trashed.  The rear tire doesn't match the front, it looks to have been a replacement.  These old Sears bikes weren't particularly special back in the day- mostly they were just knock-offs of Schwinns.  

All that, and my dad's father was incredibly frugal.  

Trying to figure out the year and other details on this bike has been a bit of detective work. I learned today about something called "Skip Tooth" chains, which this bike has. Note the wide spacing of the teeth on the sprockets.  

You can also see in that picture that my first parcel of new parts has arrived.  The old pedals were crumbling apart.  I'll save what's left of them, but these white ones kind of dress the bike up a bit. 

Anyway...skip-tooth was apparently a thing until about the mid 50's, when the modern chain became a standard, it sounds like. So that puts this bike as before that. 

I also saw the bike license on the rear fender has an expiration date of what appears to be 1954. 

The license plate says "Irondequoit", which is a suburb on the north side of Rochester. Which is odd, since my dad grew up in a south-eastern suburb, pretty far from Irondequoit. 

I decided to tackle the process of getting the old Sears bike roadworthy by the "one bearing at a time" method. Starting with the front wheel, I took apart each rotating assembly, completely cleaned and degreased it, polished it up, checked it, and reassembled with new grease. 

This worked well.  My son, who is very interested, has been able to help out, and by breaking it down into small tasks we can complete in a couple hours and then pack up, it keeps his attention. 

After regreasing the wheels, we had to true them, as they were all wonky. I've never had much luck at this, but I watched a British you-tube video and decided to "have a go at it", as they say. And, miraculously, I was able to get the old ratty wheels to run fairly true. 

All of the new parts had arrived...all except, critically, the new tires. Finally, the brown truck showed up at our house yesterday with tubes, rubber spoke guard strips, and nice new 24 inch whitewall tires. 

Which my helpers were all to eager to put on. 

The hubs on this bike were kind of finicky. It took a lot of on and off, adjusting the bearing play iteratively, to get them to run just right. 

And then I stupidly put the front fender on all wonky. 

It was getting around to bedtime, so we put the bike away and after my little helpers were in Dreamland I went back out and corrected the fender attachment. 

After fixing the fender that night, the next day saw the official unveiling of the final product:

The kiddos were super pumped. It was a small project, to be sure, but one that they followed and helped with from the point of dragging the old bike out from it's extended storage, through disassembly, cleaning, and replacing parts, and then seeing the bike as a finished product. 

It's not perfect; it was never intended to be. The rear fender brace I fabricated is clunkier than the front fender brace, and doesn't match. The bike is still missing a chain guard, and I believe was supposed to have a headlight, and possibly a tank. Parts do pop up on eBay, eventually they might get added on. 

The decision was made to leave the paint and chrome original, and clean them up as much as possible. Some of it was decent; some was OK; some was pretty terrible. But it's only original once, so it all stayed. 

I'm still not sure about the decision to lean on the white- white grips, big whitewall tires, white seat, and white pedals. But the original parts were saved, and easily swapped around.  The new seat and grips are very comfortable, so they've got that going for them. 

The original plan was to make a bike Mrs. VCH would ride, and she did try it out and seemed to like it. She's not a huge fan of bike riding; hopefully some relaxing rides on dedicated trails with good scenery will sway her point of view. Having a vintage 50s cruiser definitely adds an element of cool to the equation.  (I may get her some dice valve stem caps, too)

But my 9 year old daughter has really taken a shine to the bike, and she's just tall enough that, with the seat aaaaall the way down, she could pedal it around. 

I was about her age when I first rode this bike around my grandparents' driveway.  It's pretty cool now, 35 years later, to see my own daughter on the same bike.  

Very cool bike! And super cute kiddos too. :)

In reply to dyintorace :

Thanks, I'm fairly partial to them.  ;-)

I've been riding the bike around to work the kinks out.  It's really strange going from a mountain bike, which is all I've ridden for the past 30 years, to a cruiser.  It's geared a lot like the old cars- short gears to get you off the line, but not a lot of top end.  Makes sense- the old cars had 2 speed automatics; this is a single speed bike.  It handles moderate hills pretty well; downhill you pretty much just coast.  The coaster brake doesn't stop fast, but it will stop....eventually.  Modulating the pressure to avoid locking up is a real art.  

Neat old bike.  I still have my first bike, a 20" J.C. Higgins from the late 1950s (for those not familiar, J.C. Higgins was the house brand for Sears and Roebuck back then.)  What coaster brake does it have?  I can't tell from the pictures but it's probably a Bendix or a New Departure; either way they're pretty straightforward to strip, clean, lubricate and reassemble, and it may help the braking power.

There's a book available on eBay covering the history of the brand - the ad has some pages of the book visible, there's a girl's bike on the lower right of the last page that looks pretty similar to yours.  https://www.ebay.com/itm/295557506006