Groody Brothers - Bicycle Restoration

[Music] thank you my name is Mark Rainey and I am the owner of Grody Brothers bicycle restoration here in Topeka Kansas we've been doing custom powder coating of bicycles for the last 15 years [Music] I was a slow learner on bikes didn't learn how to ride a bike until I was in the third grade partly because the street we lived on prior was very busy no sidewalks got a bike and finally figured out how to make it go straight but I couldn't turn around so I'd ride one end of the street stop the bike get off turn the bike around climb back on and pedal back towards home first new bike was a Western Flyer it had the Dual headlight in the tank on the bike it was bright red and it was my pride and joy and until I left it out in the rain and the batteries got wet and ruined the tank I've always been a guy who was working two jobs I had to have my day job and then a side job somewhere just to help support the family I saw Help Wanted sign at a local bike shop and went in talked to the owner a little bit and next thing I knew I was selling bikes at a Trek Store they worked with used bikes as well they took used bikes and trade some of them weren't worth keeping so those you would put in the dumpster in the back well every once in a while there was one I'd find and bring home and fix it up at one point the family business was a steel fabrication shop that had a powder coating line I went and got one of them sandblasted took it in got it powder coated black and made it into a fixie which were kind of all raged at the time and it got a lot of attention next thing I know I'm getting people asking me to do their bikes [Music] gradually people you know around town started bringing stuff the next thing you know St Louis and kind of blew our mind that people had found us and wanted us to do the same thing there were shops that did nothing but powder coat bikes but they didn't do anything to the bike if you sent it in with a head badge on it they powder coated over the head badge if you sent it in with the bottom bracket cups or whatever they they did nothing more than powder coat I'd been doing some mechanic work at the bike shop my brother worked there also that's where but you know we could we could improve on this so This Guy's making money at this we can we can do better [Music] we do get a lot of sentimental bikes and uh they want to uh preserve it for their grandkids you get a lot of bikes this was my dad's when he was a kid or this was my bike that I rode all through college this was my brother's bike and he passed away just a lot of different attachments [Music] the feedback we get from people is tremendous it's it's very gratifying to hear from them recent bike a fellow said it's too pretty to ride now it was his daily writer now he's afraid to write it because it looks so great I had one guy who's come to the shop pick it up he goes you must get an awful lot of satisfaction out of doing this and I that caught me I was like well yeah I I do get personal satisfaction out of taking something that was less than stellar and turning it into something foreign [Music] from the very beginning our slogan was make your dream bike a lot of us you know you go to a bike shop or you find one online and that's the bike you get but it's not quite what you want if you could do your own bike what would you do [Music] the rock hopper we've been working on here today prime example the guy's had it forever 1987 but he doesn't like the yellow anymore now it's going to be a metallic purple and he picked the colors he had the decals custom made I think we just give people an opportunity to do those things to to step in part of our motto too is you know we do as much or as little as you want so for those do-it-yourselfers you know if you only want us to do a certain thing we will the services we offer start with media blasting stripping the old paint and rust from your frames powder coating obviously and we do pride ourselves on our two and three Color Work decal application we build Wheels rebuilding hubs coaster brakes and the two speeds dent repair and Frames if it's a steel frame brazing frame alterations or modifications if you want to do a Resto mod you want to reroute your cabling two complete here it is turnkey take it apart put it back together [Music] powder coating is a process that's been around for quite a while and actually has been used quite a lot in the bicycle industry it's a dry process I like to compare it to The copier that you use in the office powder itself is vinyl it can hold a static charge if you're talking about a copier when you scan something or send an image to a copier you're putting an electric charge into that paper the toner in The copier is attracted to that charge and then the heat of the drum fuses it to the paper powder coating is very similar to that we put a negative charge to the frame the powder is being charged positively the two static cling to each other as it passes by and then we bake it to fuse it I think the powder coating industry has come a long long way from just being an industrial coating for truck bumpers and lawn furniture we have over the past 15 years evolved our techniques to improve the Wayside powder coated bike now are far different in some areas than we did 10 years ago or even five years ago because we constantly want that better product for the customer it is a little thicker than regular paint and you are limited in the colors there's only about 10 000 of them as opposed to paint where you can mix a color specifically you can't do that in powder so you've got to be open to accepting the colors available and we want people to be picky it is their bike we want them to be happy with it we don't want them to accept something that they didn't want powder coating from an industrial perspective is you're you're looking at a part let's say a rack or for a shelving unit and it's going through a a process where there might be a dozen powder coating guns running just on it and it just it's not following the curves or anything else it's just going through a room full of fog hoping that enough powder sticks where it needs to so you know it's a coating but for us the media blasting the hand sanding the washing it down with solvents the torching the phosphatizing we're going to Great Hands-On each bike treating it like it's our own process I don't want anything going out of here that I wouldn't want for myself to do it right we don't just slap things together being meticulous about it keeping track of things record keeping probably stems from the earlier years where we just really were doing it by guessing by golly and found that you know if you only had one bike in the shop or two bikes in the shop it was pretty easy to keep track of things but any given day I probably have 15 bikes now in the in the some portion of the process so when it comes in documenting it getting before photos decal placements what's there laying out the decals laying out the Hub Parts just making sure that everything's there and in that moment focusing on okay here's what I've got all right how am I going to attack this and then you know just being able to make things go off without a hitch it's it's just a far better deal than to kind of throw it together and hope you got it right we're for anybody and everybody and it's not just road bikes it's not mountain bikes I do BMX I do kids bikes I will very reluctantly do a tricycle I get in brand new bicycles that people just they love the bike they hate the color and then we get of course the very old bikes that we're very sentimental and one of my favorite reactions from customers we did one at one point been a guy's bike and he had a brother who had had Polio they couldn't ride but he had the use of his hands and most of his body and he and his brother he'd write his brother on the handlebars and take him all over the county on these country roads and he just had such fond memories of being with his brother and doing things with his brother and after we restored the bike and he came to pick it up and he was a much older guy and he's like I'm so happy if I could jump I would that just I just thought that was hilarious quite quite a sentiment [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Cool Bike Projects

Views: 16,809

Keywords: bicycle restoration, bike restoration, peewees big adventure, peewee herman, pee wee herman, classic bike restoration, powdercoating, custom powder coat

Id: zrzPVI9Cf5A

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 04 2022