Manton & Smith help

I picked this up Sunday and can't find much information on the bike or company. The truss rods are the coolest part about it. There were only a few pictures of truss rods this style. The seat is a B-8 mesinger. The pedals are Schwinn deluxe. Grips are Hunt Wilde. The tires are seem to be in very good shape, very soft and no cracking that I can see so far. They Pennsylvania tires made by Pennsylvania Athletic Products (Bicycle tire division). The fender braces are flat. Any information about manufacturer and date is greatly appreciated. Thank you, Frank

cds2323 has a very nice color catalog showing that bike as it came, I have a poor black and white copy if that does not work for you. Believe yours to be late 30s with some schwinn stuff, chain guard and front wheel. My M and S built Nonpareil has a front sprocket like that. Nice old bike and I love the truss rods. The S stands for Jimmy Smith a bike racer of that era. Rick

Looks like a 1936-37 Manton and Smith bike. Has the locking front fork. The grips, pedals and rims are later and not original to the bike. You can pull the crank to check the date, M&S bikes of that period stamped the crank with a date. That'll give you a rough idea.

The truss rods were called swan style by M&S.

To see how it should look in color would be very cool. I took the crank off and can barely read any of the markings, but I think it says MS38 not entirely sure. Let me know what you guys think, it took me a while to see it. So I'm going to clean it up for now and see what kind of parts I run across. Thank you for the info, I'm surprised how few pictures I've come across for these.

1938 would be right too. Here's a color scan of the deluxe version, probably from 39-40.
Close to yours, has the swan truss rods. M&S used various chainrings, guards etc. on the bikes depending on badge etc. I believe you chainguard is correct. The bike was also available in a standard version without the tank/rack/light.

Nick has a M & S front light, PM us if you want info on it

Darcie