Originally, this bike was red... or maybe green, it's a tough call...  I've actually heard stories where they would repaint bikes at the factory because they ran out of a certain color.   I know it happened with Green Phantoms in the 50's.  They repainted them black, because they were selling so fast.

It had a Bendix overdrive (blue band) hub on it, so I kept it, for one of my later projects.

I stripped the frame to bare metal, sanded it and then began the restoration process.

And here is the finished product.  This bike is one sweet ride.

The paint was really dull on this bike.  I tried, but could not bring it back.  I disassembled it, masked the decals, and gave it a shiner coat of hunter green

It sparkles like new now.

This is the before.  At first glance, not real noticeable.

Here is the after picture, in which I had resprayed the frame with a shiner coat and replaced all of the decals.

It was in such sad shape, I almost retired it.

But, I needed a challenge and look how well it turned out!

It's kinda hard to see here, but it had about six coats of paint on it.

I found a correct Chainguard for it, but did not have it ready in time for the photo.

I think it looks a lot worse than what it really was.  Most of it was surface rust. 

But it sure did clean up nicely!

It doesn't look too bad in this photo, but it had a lot of scrapes and bruises on it. 

I started to give it just a shiner coat, but it really needed a lot more.  I ended up restoring this one a second time, after FedEx speared the box with a fork truck.