Mechanicjay

Got this guy for free from an Old Lady's garage.

New tubes and tires, repack bearings, and a few hours with some 0000 steel wool on the chrome bits and she cleaned up pretty well.

Has the goofy Front Freewheel System, which works weel, but is a strange to get used to.

It's slow, it's heavy, and it's stable. Perfect for a slow cruise with the kids around the neighborhood.
Schwinn Suburban ready for service.

beicster 

Those things are a blast to ride. Takes me back to my youth in the 70's.

Reynolds 531 

oh F.F.S., it's equipped with FFS

stanman13

I have its match, with the exception of the ffs (lol at Reynolds 531). They are indeed fun to ride. Makes a good townie unless you're in San Fran or something. That's my favorite of the Schwinn colors.

Jim from Boston

Schwinn SuburbanI have posted: Same color, with wire baskets.

Vintage Schwinn

CHESTNUT color is nice.

The Suburban looks better in most colors in the later graphics (decals on 1977 and later) because many of the earlier ones exhibit decal "blandness" as with age the decal tends to fade into the paintwork as Schwinn chose very conservative decal colorings for the adult ridden Suburbans. This seems to be true for 1970 through about 1974 for most colors. The decal colors that Schwinn chose to mate with each color did not contrast as much as with other model bikes. It looks very classy when everything looks nice and perfect but it shows its age when dingy, faded, or nicks appear in the decal.
Schwinn did not put a name decal on the Chainguard......just that bland Christmas star thingy and the line...................... In 1974 they got better with colors vs decal colors on Suburbans, I think... but not much better.......when the "modern" SCHWINN graphics were first seen on the 1977 Suburban, it was like Diana Prince changing into the Wonder Woman outfit on that old tv show that the beautiful Lynda Carter starred in

The 5 speed SUBURBAN is really the prize Suburban in my opinion. Another oddity it seems 1974 only has the Shimano handlebar shift lever........
The 10 speed is nothing but a VARSITY with the tubular front fork of the CONTINENTAL. Same side pull brakes as the Varsity and same heavy steel stem as the Varsity. .....Same Huret Schwinn Approved derailleurs as the Varsity/Continental.......... .....Same Model F freewheel on the 10speed Suburban/Varsity/Conti which has 28, 24, 20, 16, 14 and you've got the same 52/39 Schwinn one piece crank.
What I am saying is that the SUBURBAN 10 speed does not look (appearance) as nice as the VARSITY/CONTINENTAL based on the Colors/graphics that Schwinn supplied in each of those years. All of the Varsity/Conti/Suburban10speed have the undesireable Huret Alvit for Schwinn rear derailleurs UNLESS it came off the line when the Chicago assemblers were short of the HuretSCHWINN APProved and substituted GT-100 or GT-120 shimano for schwinn to keep the production line moving. Stick a SUNTOUR or any ancient Shimano Skylark / Shimano Eagle on in place of the Huret SCHWINN APPROVED and it improves the heck out of any Varsity/Conti/Suburban10speed. Super simple to do. The EAGLE has a gigantic bashguard that will protect it from Louie the king swingin' the Louisville Slugger because you didn't pay your gamblin debts.... It is heavy but it shifts superb, even though it was Shimano's economy model and found on half a million Kmart bikes in the early/mid seventies. The Shimano Skylark dates from the early seventies too, and was seen on millions of bikes during the seventies.
The SKYLARK, The EAGLE, and The GT-120 are functionally the exact same rear derailleur........................L & H adjusting screws are in the most traditional Shimano location............. The Skylark is lightest of the three since its bashguard is not huge....................all will be really easy to swap............just remove the pulley to change the derailleur without breaking the chain......................the beauty of these is that they mount exactly the same....hanger and the little screw thingy at the left of the hanger.............. Yes, you can get a new Chinese Lark copy for about $7 from various sellers but I like to use near perfect used Shimano parts from early to mid seventies, or NEW OLD STOCK shimano/suntour for a bike that looks immaculate.
I will not ride anything with a Huret SCHWINN APPROVED rear derailleur, or any other make of bike that has it's original Alvit. I don't care about originality that much. There is a reason that Raleigh and everyone finally went to SUNTOUR and SHIMANO by 1977. The Japanese equipment proved to be better. It wasn't a cost issue because the Japanese stuff proved to be significantly better than the fancy name that begins with C. Nearly twice as good at perhaps half the price....

The neat thing about the old 5 speed Suburbans is that you can customize them, it sometimes drives some Schwinn purists nuts.
Since I have little collection of these tourist schwinn five speeds that I ride everyday, my neighbors wanted to find two bikes. He wanted an Orange one because he had owned a Varsity in that color while at Clemson from '73-'76. She also wanted a custom color, and decided on something close to that Violet color Schwinn used on the girls' Hollywood in the mid sixties. I told them just find the bikes, making certain that the wheels are good, there is no rust etc and that I'd help them take them apart, strip and paint & decal them, and adjust/overhaul/replace stuff....
His bike has the late model SPEEDSTER chainguard decal in black.................and fork decals from some non-Schwinn that somebody named Crawford reproduces, the guy reproduces some cool decals for some old oddball makes...............I might be wrong but I think it has some Western Auto girls bike fork decals that look very Schwinn like.......his wife's bike has a cool looking colorful checkerboard seat tube decal that might be a repro of some ancient Murray or something.
Her bike also has some nice looking gold fork decals with a crown RE-PROD. from something..... ross?? columbia?? I don't know. He also just went with large two sided Schwinn on the frame.........it doesn't say Suburban anywhere on the bike. He also chose to use one of those early-mid sixties seat tube decals from a Schwinn Jaguar or perhaps Varsity..............though it says neither...........................he got all the Schwinn decals from a guy that is the officially licensed seller, guy is on ebay and makes everything and it is top-notch. Her bike is violet in color now and has a Schwinn Hollywood chainguard decal, I cannot recall from what year era that the specific Hollywood decal actually is. Both bikes look stunning. They both went with used vintage chrome Schwinn fenders instead of the painted style that the Suburban came with. Schwinn nuts just look and think.....what are those, not sure if they are Varsities, Collegiates, Continentals or what. Normal people just see the bikes and think that they have a nice looking Schwinn Speedster and a nice looking Schwinn Hollywood.
They said that the only time they had anyone seemed upset about it was some knowledgeable vintage bicycle person that they met while vacationing at Isle of Palms and riding the bikes around Sullivan's Island. Why should anyone get bent out of shape because after all they are just common mass produced Schwinns that sold in huge numbers and it is not as if anyone messed up some priceless museum artifact.
The five speed Suburban's Freewheel (MODEL J) will make any VARSITY or Continental a better bicycle for people who live anywhere there are even small hills because that 32, 26, 21, 17, 14 are the same gears that the SUPER SPORT had ( 1971 super sport, and I think all of the early-mid 70's..)
Yes, the Super Sport had a much lighter frame that was not an electroforged frame.......different geometry than the Varsity/Colleg/Sub/Conti which were all the same in frame geometry. Only the brake caliper 's reach differs between the 27" (630mm) wheel Vars/Conti/Sub and the 26" (597mm) Colleg. THE CONTINENTAL has center pulls very much like the style on the Super Sport, while the Suburban and Varsity have the exact same side pulls. The Collegiate has longer reach calipers for it's smaller 597mm wheel versus the 630mm wheel on the others.
On the subject of SUPER SPORT, they had aluminum wheels and because the sixties and seventies SUPER SPORT has the one-piece Crank, most folks just think it is another electro forged Varsity/Continental, and haul it to the curbside on trash pickup day.....
Hmmm it is making me think about placing repro SUPER SPORT frame decals on my next Suburban five speed project and then using the late SPEEDSTER chainguard decal....................... I don't know yet what color to make it. I have some very nice colors as from the factory on most of my collection. I even like my Brown '71 Suburban, years ago when I bought it, the fenders were ragged and it had a Shelburne Falls VT bicycle license from 1974 on it......................I rebuilt this and now it has no fenders, Michelin Protek tires with a cool looking reflective band on them, and rat traps from a '75 or '76 Varsity on it. My favorite Suburban in my fleet is my '72 Campus green 21" women's model with the stock bow pedals and fenders, stock steel wheels and the basic Kenda K-35 gumwall 32-622 tires. The brake pads and cables are all relatively new. The seat is the stock seat.
One thing you all might find interesting is that all of my SCHWINN Suburbans / Collegiates are fitted with the INBIKE IC321 speedometer/odometer WIRELESS VERSION. I ordered one a couple of years ago when I first saw that exact model for the first time. I couldn't find anyone who had tried it, as the Chinese seller had only sold two of them, but I liked that the screen size and liked that it had both the odometer in top right corner and time of day in top left and SPEED reading was large in center, with a selectable display item below that.....elaps time/avg... and trip odometer below.
It was only about eleven dollars direct from ShenZhen or Hong Kong from some chinese seller.
I knew that mounting it on the Schwinn forks was not going to work, but I saw immediately from seeing the photos of the thing, that I would be able to make a small metal bracket that I could attach and epoxy to the Sensor thingy that reads magnet.
I ended up making the bracket by cutting an existing lightweight stamped steel bracket from old miniblinds or window shades brackets.... The stamped metal already had a hole that was just the right size to fit under the left axle nut of the Schwinn's front tire. Basically all I did was cut and bend this bracket such that it fit when mated to the SENSOR body. You have two holes where zip ties ordinarily secure these to a broomstick fat fork of a mountain bike etc...... What I did was make this hang off the left axle nut..... You've got two holes where the zip ties would go.....on the first one that I built, I got the metal shaped to grip the end of the Sensor and used ordinary black polyester sewing thread heavily saturated in epoxy to securely affix the epoxied bracket................recall how they would stabilize ancient tennis racquets and ancient drivers, and three woods etc with the whipping of thread near the club head so there was zero chance of the wood's hosel cracking.....
....same idea...............................you have a few options for mounting such a bracket but because of where the battery compartment is on that sensor, you have essentially only a small-footprint to get it done..............I haven't explored how much you can drill without messing it up because I wanted a design that looked almost factory. Essentially look at it as "fiberglassing" the homemade steel mount to the INBIKE model IC 321 sensor such that the sensor mounts by hanging down off of the axle nut (left front on all my bikes), INSTEAD OF VIA PEEL & STICK and ZIP TIE TO FRONT FORK..........................It is my opinion that the zip tie/peel and stick method as these are designed DOES NOT WORK ADEQUATELY FOR SKINNY BLADE FORKS LIKE ANCIENT SCHWINNS.
I also made one that has now gone thousands of miles on my neighbors Walmart Triathlon bike( Kent GMC Denali thing that retails for about $175 and weighs 29.7 pounds) ...no kidding she has done eight tri's on that bike and the past three with the Inbike hanging off the left axle nut.......If my memory isn't failing, I constructed that bracket from a SIMPSON tie bracket flat piece from HOME DEPOT or LOWES....because it already had the perfect round size hole to fit on the axle nut....just had to cut it to size and shape and maybe some other tiny lightweight stamped piece of from something that fit that sensor like a glove.....on that one I know that I used a bread wrapper twist tie through two holes and around the bracket on the sensor.............the bread wrapper wire was soaked in epoxy......it worked and everything looks factory...............for the Kent GMC we obtained a generic black garmin arm 31.8 handlebar mount from China for about $5 and then proceeded to mount the INBIKE IC 321 computer on this. You will have to modify the generic garmin arm as the mounting is different.....we chose to epoxy the INBIKE's computer mount to the generic garmin handlebar mount................they are both the same color plastic......we did again use some black sewing thread...just a little to affix the two..and then wet the entire portion with epoxy..................this small area of thread and epoxy can only be seen if you look under the mounting arm at it's backside which cannot be seen from any normal view. We determined that this was the strongest way to affix it, that would allow for perfect cosmetic appearance, and appear factory made and with full functionality of the mount of the INBIKE IC 321. What I'm saying here is that we might have been able to with just an exacto knife or dremel tool...possibly but not likely to get a perfect modification of the generic garmin such that it would accept the INBIKE....... knowing how some of those things don't go so great because you're cutting lightweight plastic designed for a certain application...............we chose to GRAFT (epoxy..and spider web lace with about an inch of thread) graft the Black Inbike mounting platform to the top of the $5 generic garmin 31.8 handlebar mount.......it fits perfect and looks perfect and the black plastic is identical........................only if you look underneath it from a position of say laying on the ground can you notice the inbike portion is glued on top of the garmin mount.
The magnet for the spokes as supplied with the INBIKE fit perfectly on the kent GMC DENALI Road bike.
Fitting this same magnet to the ancient Schwinn spokes is not as simple because the cheap plastic part that is supposed to capture the spoke doesn't get it right....or the way you'd want it.......ON A COUPLE OF ANCIENT SCHWINNS, I simply slightly cut or notched this cheap little plastic part and then held the magnet in the perfect position again with a piece of thread and then with a little 5 min epoxy/jb weld , made the magnet a permanent part of one spoke in the front wheel. I highly recommend with any of these computer things that you glue the magnet to it's factory housing because quality control is never great on inexpensive parts....and the magnet will likely come loose over time from the plastic mounting housing. You could otherwise by a replacement magnet with a better housing mount.......bike computer magnet SEARCH on ebay will yield some $1 replacement magnets with free shipping from china.
These INBIKE IC 321 wireless units work great..........................they don't read until you're going at least 4 mph.....I mean that you'll get a display but it will be unrealistic non-sense for maybe a 1/2 second until it stabilizes. Simple to adjust the reading for mph and simple to put the measured tire circumference or the mathmatical formula of what is it 2 pie r ........ If you do like the idea of trying the INBIKE IC 321, do not buy it from current Chinese sellers, because the price differential is only less than $2 from what a major USA seller sells it for. It sells for $13 and some odd cents from some USA based seller but it comes with the two button batteries included..........................if you buy it from chinese sellers, most of them do not supply the batteries.....lets see $11.45 with free shipping from China is no bargain if you then have to buy batteries locally............................$13.42 or whatever with free shipping is much better with the batteries included.
The INBIKE IC 321 is a very nice little WIRELESS unit. Speedo display is large for such an item...................It displays ODOMETER mileage like a car......
............................Now the way I set them up generally takes me one or two tries, so if you set the wrong number or get the clock's time wrong......WHAT I SIMPLY DO IS REMOVE THE BATTERY AND RE-INSTALL to simplify starting over from scratch.
I recommend it. I am not affiliated with any merchant or ebay seller of this product. I am simply a happy user but will say you'll have to make mounting modifications much like what I mentioned earlier to make it happily live on an old Schwinn. I have purchased several of these from China direct and from the US based seller at $13 and all provided the exact same product, no better, no worse, except having batteries supplied is worth sourcing from the US seller who is on ebay. Do not even bother with the ancient deluxe Schwinn Speedometer like some us had in 1972...........yeah it looks nice but they were never accurate like the modern stuff.....and who wants a dang Volkswagen like speedometer cable attached to a doohickey ...................if you've got a working unit on an existing bike, well okay keep it but buying one to actually use is like going and buying Victrola from 1910 to use for musical listening...........maybe for furniture in the house....a conversation starter.....like any antique thing...

PS. don't overlook any Varsities, Continentals, Suburbans, Collegiates, or if you get lucky, Super Sports in the trashpile or wherever.
You can find handlebars and brake levers of the TOURIST variety on certain lightweight Schwinns of the late sixties through the seventies that nobody cares about because they don't have at least five gears. Schwinn chrome was done better than most everyone else's and survives.
Likewise, don't overlook a nice Columbia V Tourist 5 speed or Ross Eurotour 5 speed, Sears Free Spirit BRITTANY either in the gaspipe 1 piece crank variety or with lugged frame and 3 piece crank, and don't forget the Raleigh Sprite 5 speed. I have even resurrected the AMF tourist 5 speed model and the 1970's KMART All-Pro 5 speed tourist model. They aren't as horrible as one might imagine, and anything with a One Piece CRANK can usually be slightly upgraded with better S brand one piece crank and chicago bearings if necessary........these are basic bikes not competition bikes. You can mess around and have fun learning something if you know nothing about bikes.....................get a copy of the GLENN'S COMPLETE BICYCLE MANUAL (c)1973 approx 350 pages large size softbound......probably sold over 1/2 million copies in ten printings...................you should be able to find a usedcopy for about $5 shipped free from one of those huge ebay book sellers if your local library doesn't have it. The true beauty of these ONE PIECE CRANK, electroforged Schwinns and lesser makes too is that the tools needed, you could buy at Harbour Freight locally if you had zero tools to start with..........the most expensive tool would be a large Crescent Wrench to use on the crank removal and removing the stem/headset......for a large Crescent Wrench like that might be about $12 at Harbour Freight. I do recommend Schwinns only unless you come across something very nice and hardly ever used when referring to the competitors of the Suburban/Colleg tourist models back in the day. Free is good, even if it is just for a learning experience to see how all the parts go together and take apart. Don't get carried away trying to spend money re-habbing everything you find.. It is likely better to have several nice, roadworthy bikes at any given time, than a whole lotta ones that need everything before they can be ridden. Ride em if you got them!

dddd

Man, Vintage Schwinn, that is quite the treatise there, full of good content though I admit that I read but a third of it so far.

The Suburban was truly designed to be what it is. It's like perhaps the Varsity was created using the Suburban's predecessor by the mere addition of the racing saddle and handlebars (all early derailer models having DT levers until 1967 or so).

I get around locally using a fifty-year-old ladies Supersport that I keep on my porch, with flat pedals of course for trips to this store and that.

The Suburban handles better than the (albeit-lighter but twitchier) flat-bar lady's Supersport frankly, due to the Suburban's much more relaxed frame angles being a better "fit" with the swooped flat handlebar and modest-length stem. The full 2X10 gearing is appreciated in these hilly parts, and some past owner's mechanic apparently agreed with you that the Shimano Skylark-style derailer would be work better over the wide-range freewheel.
The Allvit derailers shift just fine however on the 14-28 freewheels that they were designed for!

These old Schwinns still getting frequent use testifies to their timeless utilitarian value and sheer durability it seems. Every household should have one!

I found this bike in bone-stock (but for that derailer) condition at the local Goodwill. It has patina and has paid for itself many times over already. And it doesn't seem to need a heavy lock to resist theft..

dddd

One more thing, Vintage Schwinn, for the price of a Garmin bracket, an older Garmin 205 might turn up at a thrift store or somewhere. Mine has been reliable for like 15 years now! I've lost track of it a couple of times, with it turning up a couple of years later still quite fully charged. You can use the same one on five different bikes, and it needs no magnet on the spokes or sensor on the fork leg. Each handlebar bracket might cost $20 though.

Here it's on my "climbing bike" (the Varsity I modded with a 6-speed freewheel using a modified Schwinn/Allvit derailer).
The Allvit derailer uses a rather stiff return spring and so has a heavy shifting action. So it benefits more from the use of compressionless cable housing, though admittedly it's flat-out tricky to fit such housing with the correct sort of ferrules on these bikes. But using fresh, modern brake cable housing with decent chain and freewheel cogs gives good shifting every time (using C9 chain with U-6 freewheel on this one).

Mechanicjay

So was the FFS not terribly popular, or does it just date this bike to a very narrow period of time?

Vintage Schwinn

My guess is that the Shimano FFS was around from about 1977 to at least 1983 but I don't know exactly when it ceased. I have seen other manufacturers' bikes that were FFS equipped. I'm guessing that those others all date from about four years in the early eighties.

dddd

At a time when Schwinn bikes had been under fire for their prodigious weight, someone decided to add yet another 3/4 pound of FFS to the thing!