Deal4Fuji

I'm hoping to date a Ross Central Park I bought for $10 about 15 years ago at an estate sale in my neighborhood. It's a plain jane SS comfort bike with a chain guard & fenders, but it does have butted tubing and nice metalic blue paint. It was used for a while by all the family, but's been sitting in storage for the last 10 years or so. With this spring's renewed interest in all thing bike - I got it out and cleaned it up after my Fuji project. The chrome had peeled off the fenders with rust taking over and the chrome rims were too far gone to clean up. Since Ross has New York roots and is a Central Park model, I decided a all black theme for fenders, rims & spokes might give it kind of urban look. Here's my after pics (I always forget to make before photos) along with a close up of the serial number. Anyone have any idea of the age?

I found this information from Wiki about the Ross Co:

Ross was a bicycle brand that manufactured over 15 million bicycles in the United States[3] between 1946 and 1988. The company, which competed with domestic bicycle manufacturers as Schwinn and Huffy, was widely noted for its pioneering marketing of mountain bikes.

Ross was started by Albert Ross as Ross Galvanizing Works in 1940[4] "manufacturing and galvanizing pipes and pipe fittings for the fencing industry and later galvanized steel parts for military ships during World War II."[5] After WWII, it was incorporated as Chain Bike Corp. in 1946,[2] and changed the name to Ross Bicycles Inc. in 1982.[6] Its headquarters were in Rockaway Beach, Queens,[7] and manufacturing was in Allentown, Pennsylvania.[8] Ross moved bicycle production to Taiwan in 1986 and filled for bankruptcy protection in 1988.[1]
In addition to bicycles, Ross manufactured ammunition boxes for the US government at its Lehigh facility and cited the government contract as the source of its financial difficulties at the time of filing for Chapter 11 protection.[1]

SquidPuppet

Sorry, no clue on the age, but that's a really cool bike. The black works. Get rid of that "modern?" saddle though. Toss an old B17 on her and she'd be perfect.

wahoonc

Check on the inside of the original rims for date stamps. I have found several on old Huffy and Ross bikes over the years.

Aaron

oldude

your Ross looks great, I have one nearly identical except mine is almost completely covered in rust 🤣