rustymetal

A neighbor asked me to get her 80's Murray beach cruiser in shape.
The chain is a bit rusty and I need to remove it to soak it.
Its a typical 1/8" chain on a coaster brake bike, but I don't see any master link?
Its a KMC chain, ever other link reads KMC, the others say O/M.
The rivets are sort of peened on two sides. Do I just grind a pair of rivets flat and add a master or just treat it like a road bike chain?

The bike is an early 80's Murray Westwood 26". I was surprised to see its got two Suntour hubs and a huge Made in USA logo on the chainguard.

rhenning

The KMC is probably a replacement chain and whoever put it on the bike used a chain tool instead of a master link to put it on. Roger

rustymetal

I doubt anything has been changed on this, there's actually a his/hers pair, both likely haven't seen the light of day or been ridden since the early 80's or so. The tires still have their little nipples on them, the hang tags are still on the bars and the seats still have plastic covers over them. They just sat and the the grease petrified and on the men's bike, there's two links that are rusted stiff. The rest of the chain looks new.

I just never seen an 1/8" chain without a link, and I've never seen this style rivet before. The pins are longer than usual and sort of pinched or peined on each side making them larger than the hole. They look like they'll need to be ground off before trying to push out a pin. I've got lots of KMC 1/8" chain here, but never saw this style before, and don't ever recall seeing it marked O/M on every other link.

The bike looks a bit old school for a cruiser, its more like a Schwinn middleweight copy with a cantilever frame and street tires.

The bad part here is that she thinks they're both valuable antiques, I think she intends to list them for big money because someone told her bikes are worth a ton of money these days. They're not bad as far as department store bikes but I don't see them being worth more than the $50 or so she likely paid for them new 35-40 years ago.

2old

Years ago before "links" or Shimano pins, chains were separated by pushing the pin on one link almost all the way out, pulling apart then reassembled in reverse fashion. Probably Sheldon Brown has information. The bikes are pretty vintage and depending on brand could be worth a few bucks. I'd love to find an old Montgomery Wards bike, probably quite inexpensive when new.

OldCruiser

People think just because a bike is 30 years old , it’s an antique , They made junk 30-40 years ago , just like they do now .

Years ago , before I owned a chain breaker tool , I used to use a punch and hammer .

AlmostTrick

I've seen plenty of single speed bikes (1/8" chain) without master links. Both old and new. I'm convinced they came this way from the factory. Probably cheaper that way. Just use a standard chain breaker on it. Or remove half a link and add a master if you want to get really fancy!

rustymetal

I've been working on bikes for the last 40 years or so and never ran across an 1/8" chain like without a master or one with rivets like this. I have a Park chainbreaker, and I pushed out two pins, but in pushing the pins out, the top of each pin broke off, like the head of a rivet. The pins are sort of pinched on each end to make them wider on two sides to hold them in, once that pinch is gone, they fall out.
I tossed the chain and stuck a normal 1/8" chain on there. The holes left after pushing out the pins were larger than a standard master link, leaving that link with a sloppy connection.
The rest of the bike doesn't look terrible, mostly just Wald components everywhere, about the same as a 70's Columbia or any other American bike of that time. The frame is visibly tig welded with spot welded dropouts and the fork is a unicrown design like most cruisers in the 80's were. I did give the frame a few tweaks to make it perfect, the dropouts weren't perfectly set and the forks were slightly off but not by much.
Its got a Messinger cruiser saddle, Wald Cruiser bars, Wald #4 stem, Suntour coaster brake rear hub, Wald front hub, (the front hub looks identical to the Schwinn Approved '200' hubs from the 70's but with Wald instead of Schwinn on them.
The cranks are 165mm Wald, the Sprocket looks the same as the one on my 60's Rollfast, and the headset and BB are both standard Wald items. Its nothing great but nothing too terrible either. A good boardwalk ride for an old couple not in a hurry.
A good old Schwinn fillet welded frame would no doubt be stronger and heavier but you could likely swap the headbadge on this for just about any other American brand from the 60's or 70's and not be able to tell the difference. The tig welded tubes actually may be an improvement over some other methods I've seen.
Its not high end by any means but what beach cruiser is?
Chances are the type of buyer for this sort of bike isn't likely to spend very much for a bike and if they had too spend more, they wouldn't own a bike. I spend many summers at the shore visiting relatives there who had a garage full of Huffy three speeds and a couple of Free Spirit Cruisers. We used those bikes for years without any issues and likely no maintenance. Not everyone needs a $200 bike to pedal around on the boardwalk or up and down the block a few times.
The fact though that these had little or no grease on any of the bearings is a bad sign that they didn't want them to last too long for what was likely no more than $80 or so each brand new. But they did survive more than 30 years or so with no grease just fine, I was able to just wash out the bearings and grease everything up and put it back together. Surprisingly nothing was rusted inside.

My own bikes though are mostly Schwinn and Raleighs, but I don't think I'd pass on one of these for the right price as a beater.
Its a lot lighter than any of my Schwinn bikes too. I've not decided if that's good or bad.