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09-22-23, 02:34 PM

#18

Trakhak

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Chombi1

"Electro Forged".....what does that really mean? Welding?
Whatever it is, it seems to have made Schwinn frames bomb proof, maybe even more that Peugeot's UO8s....

Excerpt from this article on the Sheldon Brown site:

"Before the E/F frames, Schwinn was fillet-brazing and welding joints by hand, then grinding and polishing them until the frame seemed carved from a block of steel. The E/F frame sought to mimic a handbuilt, fillet-brazed frame while dramatically reducing manufacturing costs. To achieve this look, Schwinn engineers actually moved the "joints" from their typical locations at the ends of the mitered tubes to a circumferential butt joint around the tube about 1 1/2" from the typical joint locations: the "head tube" actually extends out to the joint on the top tube and down tube."

By the way, it occurs to me that Schwinn already had plenty of experience in building lightweight bikes (having introduced the Paramount as long ago as 1938) before they came up with the electro-forging process.

But electro-forging wasn't just about reducing frame-building costs. They could have chosen to build lighter-weight bikes, like the European bike companies, but they must have been aware that the American market for such bikes just wasn't there. Not yet.

But they knew that they could sell durability So they built all-but-indestructible bikes and introduced the world's first lifetime frame warranty, doubtlessly to the despair of their competitors. There's no knowing when, or if, lifetime frame warranties would have become a widespread policy without Schwinn dominating the U.S. bike market until well into the '70's.

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