# Huffman Lightning  Flyer



## jeep44 (Jul 16, 2010)

I just bought this today at the motorcycle meet at Wauseon, Ohio. It appears to be a Huffman, with "Lightning Flyer" on the head badge.  The serial number on the frame is 
 H241356  (the 3 might be an 8)  What year would this be? Are those the correct rims? it has 26x1.75 tires on it now.


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## 37fleetwood (Jul 17, 2010)

1947 the wheels look fine the tires should 2.125


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## jeep44 (Jul 17, 2010)

Thank You. I'm currently just thinking of leaving it exactly as-is, other than putting the correct tires on it (these are ancient old cracked tires, somehow holding air. Unexposed paint around the serial number area looks to be a Burgundy color.


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## charnleybob (Jul 17, 2010)

1947?
What do you base that guess on?


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## 37fleetwood (Jul 17, 2010)

the frame style and seat clamp mainly then the rear fender upper attach point.the prewar bikes had the seat post binder like the Firestone you sold and the post war bikes had a regular clamp. in 1948 they changed the frame style entirely. 1944-1947 are the only frames that look like this one. there are a very few 1944-46 bikes out there and a ton of 1947's
here is a photo of my 1944-45 Dayton. it has all black out accessories which is another reason why this bike moves to 1947, it doesn't. there used to be a thread on this, maybe I'll rewrite it.
thanks for asking the info should be out there for everyone.


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## jeep44 (Jul 17, 2010)

I went out to look at this bike more closely when you mentioned "blackout". The cranks, kickstand,seat post,and both front and rear hubs are all painted black-would this move it into a wartime -produced bike?


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## 37fleetwood (Jul 18, 2010)

sadly your bike has a New Departure rear hub and they don't have dates. your bike has some chrome so we could move the date back to possible 1946-1947. I'm thinking anything earlier would be more like mine and have no chrome whatever, and have the military looking handle bars like mine. clean your bike up a bit and don't change anything but the tires etc. they're not terribly valuable, but they are very rare. mine was in house paint when I got it so I painted it, yours looks like it might clean up pretty well.
another tell-tale on your bike is the square nuts in the rear drop outs. the prewar bikes don't have them and the 1948-'50's bikes have a different dropout entirely. actually if you set a prewar next to yours, the dropouts are a different size, but that would be hard to tell from a photo.


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## jeep44 (Jul 18, 2010)

Thank you for the information on this bike. I cleaned it up quite a bit today, and it looks considerably better. I don't think I will repaint it-I am going to leave it as-is.Like they say, it's only original once. There is a suprising amount of pinstriping on it-even the fender stays have a line on them. With the cream rims and stripes, and the deep maroon color, it must have been a very good-looking bike once. I will soon have proper balloon tires on it-it looks so strange with those skinny ones on it now. I suspect you are right about the chrome-the chain ring itself is chrome, and so is the handle bar and stem, but who knows about the bars-maybe some one liked chrome better. It has old coke-bottle grips on it.


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## 37fleetwood (Nov 1, 2011)

based on the serial chart posted elsewhere in the forum this bike sits squarely in 1946 somewhere.


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