1968 Schwinn Panther 26

So this bike came to me via my cousin at some point in the 90’s minus most of the original parts save for the original and partially taken apart Bendix 2 speed kick back rear wheel and front wheel both still in as found horrible condition. Aside from a short stint as my kick around Cayucos Cruiser this thing was basically forgotten in my shed for at least 25 years. Enter the “Plandemic” and I suddenly had free time and nothing to do. My plan was to build a BMX style cruiser and not worry about using new/re-pop parts as anything was better than how it came to me. I decided to keep the original paint because it’s only original once but I took a page out of the VW/patina guys notebook and treated it with boiled linseed oil and sprayed oil inside all of the tubes after blowing them out with compressed air. I wanted to keep it within reason as far as cost went and did some serious shopping around scoring good deals on the Profile closeouts page and after about 3 months finally was able to source the practically impossible to find NOS Weinmann/Schwinn brake adapter…