NOS Parts - What if?

I just read a story about Tucker No. 52 making it's debut. It was nothing but a cowl, serial number, and an unfinished chassis. It was built entirely from NOS parts, 67 years after the company shut down. I got to thinking. What if somewhere there were NOS frames, tanks, racks, guards, springers, and other parts to build an NOS bike? Say a Huffy Radiobike, Schwinn Corvette, Huffman Twinflex, Monark Silverking or something else?

bobcycles said:

a few years back a famous collector / hoarder in chicago passed on and a huge auction took places on his property. Classic cars, motorcycles, bicycles and other collectibles. I had the good fortune of winning 3 nos 1949 schwinn bicycle frames, 2 dx and 1 hornet.
Never built, not 'seconds' just frames that somehow missed the build up.
Since that time i've been watching for the missing pieces, some of which i did have, to rebuild the frames completely with nos parts. I am almost there on all 3 projects....fenders, lights, wheels, forks, tanks, guards etc. Makes me wonder how many nos balloon frames like these are 'out there'.

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pics!!!!

I was always under the impression that the Schwinn drum brakes basically sucked in the braking department until I found some nos shoes for them.
I was so surprised by how good those drum brakes worked once they had new shoes. Every bit as good a brake as anything I've ever tried.

NOS rules! When you can get it.

The NOS stuff is out there guys. My good friend has an inventory of NOS VW bus sheet metal and parts that he has been collecting since the early 1980's. His loft and 11 car garage is filled with stuff. In fact he has an NOS bus clamped together in his loft....

I'm sure the bike stuff is out there as well.

HA! Charlie aint built that yet!?!? I saw that in the early 90s...

He has everything for it, but some parts can't be securely clamped into place. I doubt it will ever leave the loft...

25 years ago, or maybe more.... There was an old bicycle shop found in New England. It had been closed for 40 or 50 years. It was packed full of NOS Iver Johnson stuff. All in mint cond. Frames, tanks, all the parts. Still wrapped up from the factory. I know a bunch of bikes were built from that load. To me they are the real deal. The Tucker # 52 is kind of the same thing. But it was never documented with a title from the MFG when the others were built....

catfish said:

25 years ago, or maybe more.... There was an old bicycle shop found in New England. It had been closed for 40 or 50 years. It was packed full of NOS Iver Johnson stuff. All in mint cond. Frames, tanks, all the parts. Still wrapped up from the factory. I know a bunch of bikes were built from that load. To me they are the real deal. The Tucker # 52 is kind of the same thing. But it was never documented with a title from the MFG when the others were built....

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It will be interesting because it DOES have a 1948 VIN, for what I understand?

There's a company in TX I believe that has all the old DeLorean parts and is building new DeLoreans from them, though I think they're making them electric (which is better than that POS engine it came with originally). In any event, it's not unheard of as Shelby built Cobras a few years back using original VINs (and frames I think) that were set aside, but not actually built during the original production years and Jaguar is doing something similar with E-Type lightweights because they made even less than they originally intended, though I believe they're entirely being built from scratch, not using original frames or anything (such that it had). There are probably others, as well. People have also built all new cars from almost nothing and IIRC, there's even a disputed two Jaguar either D-Types or XKSSs with matching VINs—the original car was crashed and someone built a new car around the engine and whatever else while another guy built a new car out of the frame or something like that and due to local legal ambiguities (I believe they reside in different countries today), they're both considered to be authentic cars using the same valid VIN. Luckily, bicycles don't get that complicated.