Centurion Lemans: Decluttering, a rough cleaning and preliminary assessment

 "Everybody wants to be big, but don't nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weight." - Ronnie Coleman (Champion Bodybuilder)

 After riding around mowing the lawn - roughly a half acre, I took an hour to mess around with the new (LOL) bicycle, until the sweat began pouring off my head and affecting my eyesight.

The first step of de-cluttering the bike was to cut Kryptonite U-lock from the frame, since the key was not included in the purchase.  This only took about 20 seconds with a cutting wheel.  It took me longer to find the cutting wheel than it did cut the lock off.  Of bigger concern was not starting a fire with flying sparks, or having the cutting wheel bind up and damage the bike frame.

With that chore done, it was time to remove the reflectors, chewed up bottle cage, the dork ring, and the pedals (which also had reflectors, LOL).

The pedals were very difficult to get loose.  The threads required a lengthy soak with penetrating oil.

Ah, there we go: A cog set without the plastic dork ring.  Still dirty, but without the clutter.

Peeled off the handlebar tape.  It was looking really rough at the edges.

I hauled everything outdoors and hosed it off.  The dust and weed debris was getting irritating to work around.

I started using carb cleaner on the front sprocket and chainrings, but thought the better of it, so as not to ruin the finish on the Biopace sticker.  I'll take it apart and scrub around it with something milder.

Below:  The gear set is really grimy, but this will come off.  The frame I sprayed with Simple Green, and most of the grime is already gone.  The chain needs to soak in gasoline for a day or two to dissolve the grease, then in vinegar to dissolve the rust.  Or I could just replace the damn thing, hahaha.

There are a few dings in the frame, and I've already got a line on some replacement paint.

The frame is N7G6447, so the "N" indicates the frame builder is "Japan National" (Matsushita).  "7" indicates 1987.  The G indicates the 12-13 week of 1987 (April), and it's the 6447th frame built at that factory in April of '87.  Decoding these takes some research...