Postwar bikes will have front facing dropouts, an integral kickstand mount, and an electro-forged frame which will have a ‘seam’ on the bottom bracket shell (see Fig. My book reviews here įor bikes built before 1952 you need to narrow it down further by determining if the bike is a prewar (WWII) or a postwar bike? The normal ‘tells’ for a prewar bike are rear facing dropouts and no provision for an integral kickstand mount *. Not all catalogs are posted online so you would do well to buy some of the books available if you plan on collecting Schwinns. There are also sites that have many of the yearly Schwinn catalogs which are helpful to identify the model and year of a bike-Google “Schwinn Catalog” and you will get several sites listing these catalogs. A few of the books published also contain the Aug 1948 and up serial number lists. Personally if I do an online lookup I use the Angelfire site. Schwinn duplicated numbers through the years so you really need to know the differences between models/equipment to accurately date a bike. The site has a place where you enter your serial and supposedly it gives you the year. Schwinn only released total annual production numbers as did most other manufacturers.Ī few words regarding the online lists. There are also no breakouts on exact production figures of models. Also keep in mind a serial number will not tell you what model, options, colors or any other specific information like an automobile vehicle identification number (VIN) will. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked “what year is my Schwinn” when, in fact, the bike was another make. Other things such as how the bike was equipped and who sold it can also provide clues to when the bike was built.īefore using this information make sure you have a Schwinn. Enough bikes have positively been dated by records such as invoices, build sheets, dealer ledgers, and dated photographs that a decent idea of serial number ranges can at least get us in the ball park. You will read in many places that no serial number lists exist prior to the fire at the Schwinn factory in August of 1948. You will need to pay attention to paint schemes and colors, seat binding posts, drop outs, serial number structure, font, and size, welding construction, and other ‘tells’.Rather than replicate what can be found on the internet in a variety of places I’m just going to offer some prewar information along with some other observations to help locate and approximately date a bike. This is not as simple as it sounds because nearly all manufacturers made very similar frame styles. While this may seem obvious the first thing to do is to make sure you are looking at a Schwinn frame. After the war all boys 26” tire frames were 18”. In the prewar years Schwinn offered their boys 26” tire models in several different frame sizes (16”, 18”, and the so-called ‘tall frame’ 20”). The juvenile models mimicked the adult models to a large degree. The girls frames were pretty much the same and were differentiated between model lines largely by paint schemes or equipment e.g. This article will not cover either girls or juvenile models. I am not going to try and associate the models to the frames because both straight bar and cantilever frames were used for Autocycle models and trying to explain Motorbike, Cycleplane, Standard, Super Deluxe, etc… gets complicated. Many different models were built on these frames. Essentially there are three basic styles the straight bar, the DX, and the cantilever frames. This article is not going to cover all the varieties of frames Schwinn built through the years of which there are many.
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