repechage

yep, my New World is fillet brazed AND has a three piece crank. Easily upgradable. I will have to look at the serial number. Has a single speed freewheel too.

montclairbobbyb 

Schwinn's were built to LAST... at least the frames and the one piece cranks, among other things. The steel, seamed rims (of the 60s/70s) were dogs and had a tendency to develop flat spots, and the derailleurs (while built to take abuse) were pigs as well. But I'm sure our grandchildren will see these same Schwinn framed creations still rolling on better rims and updated components 50 years from now.

Sedgemop 

Interest in a family business extending into a fourth generation is some kind of small miracle. Over the years, I've interacted with a few non-bicycle legacy companies and the third generation tends to do them in. They tend to lose contact/interest with what originally made the company great, along with encountering a host of trade and labor challenges, of course. The Schwinn family has a lot to be proud of.

repechage

‘those were the Schwinn Tubular Rims as they called them - actually pretty strong, they got dented if one ran over railroad tracks or a big pothole with under inflated tires, any rim would.
‘those had a series of drain holes to assist the draining of the plating tank fluids, they also did copper, nickel, chrome. High zoot.

other than the very early 60’s, Schwinn specified Huret mechanisms until Shimano wrestled in. There was a derailleur guard accessory that attached to say a varsity rear axle that would probably protect it from a tank shell.
weight? Not a concern.

the electroforged process was a marvel of engineering and production technique, again, weight? Part was styling. They ran that equipment intensive process for too many lines of bikes, an blind alley that was attempted to be addressed by the LeTour. That took a while. Setting up a plant outside of Chicago dodged the UAW, (anyone recall the Schwinn Labor Strike?) but was a total start from scratch effort for the framebuilding.

SirMike1983 

After the general demise of the glue-on wood and metal road rims in the 1930s, Lobdell became the biggest producer of rims for American-made "lightweights", producing a single-wall, hooked bead type rim. The bead seat diameter was 599mm, an oddball American size that had some cross-over with the British 26 inch club size at 597mm. The rims were fairly light for their time, but prone to going out of true, becoming flattened, and prone to deforming badly at the spoke holes if subjected to any extra tension.

Schwinn's tubular rim family of the post-war era was much heavier, but also much more durable than what came before it in terms of the Lobdell. Schwinn's double layer construction was in many ways similar to improvements to some of the British-made rims of the early post-war era, but even heavier. 1940s-50s era tubular rims tend to be better than the 60s-70s era ones (the finishing and smoothing on the later ones often comes up short).

Schwinn also made some lesser-seen, high-performance rims for their time in the 1940s-50s, including lightened stainless S6 rims to compete with the Dunlop Special Lightweight steels, and even dural alloy rims to compete with the European and Dunlop light alloy rims of the day. S6 lightened stainless rims are uncommon, but findable today. S8 dural rims are rare, but a real prize if you find them.

1949 Ad:



Schwinn also kept its hat in the performance racing ring with the S12 glue-on dural racing rim and the S14 wooden glue-on racing rim.

Arguably the biggest handicap of the 26 inch Schwinn-built "lightweights" from 1938 through the 70s was the use of odd rim sizing. By using 597mm for the tubular S6 and S5 rims, they bought into an already-dying wheel size. The British club bikes largely moved to 27 inch rims later in the 1950s. If you think 590mm English three speed tires are hard to find, Schwinn 597mm tires are even more limited today.

madpogue 

That transition period was almost 20 years. Last year I happened to flip two Schwinns, marking each end of the period. A 1975 LeTour, one of the first Japanese frames contracted to Bridgestone. And a 1992 High Plains MTB, one of the last to roll off the Greenville line.

I wonder how long Richard will remain in the area. He used to do "lectures" (which were really more like chats) about various topics in bicycling history at the State Historical Museum downtown. I hope they reach out to him again.

chain_whipped

Four decades ago.
In March, 1980, 1,400 Schwinn workers joined the United Auto Workers, and the following October, they began a three-month strike. It was the beginning of the end for Schwinn's Chicago production, and gradually over the next three years the firm's four Chicago plants were closed.

chain_whipped

The Stingray was a massive hit for Schwinn but later the marketing dept was asleep or flat out ignorant of trends.

Middle 1970's saw the start of kids wanting to race like moto-X and the Stingray was getting battered, literally. Then Skip Hess, an accomplished road cyclist and car drag racer created the Motomag 20" wheel. The kids soon realized they now had a robust wheel but the down side it was so good, the Stingray frames were new taking more of the brunt and breaking apart. That lead to Skip Hess and the dedicated BMX tough bike. Schwinn lacked and was tardy on this huge market.

Then when the adult sized BMX (aka: mountain bike) was on, Schwinn again was ignorant and finally offered the scrappy standards of the day, electro forged Sidewinder. Having all the resources, they could've launched a leader in that market segments. But in time they got their Japanese partners and made some terrific MTB's, yet at the mercy of the US factories crumbling under the forced UAW leaders greed. The Homegrown series was great but late. It get buried with hundreds of other new and emerging brands and the stigma of grandpa's Schwinn was pretty much the end.