# The largest Chicago Schwinn ever made



## momo608

[A one year only freak in the funeral colors of the last gasp of the Chicago Schwinn Continental. So sad!

This frame is unusual as you can see being half electroforged and half filet brazed.


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## Dale Alan

That is very interesting.What was the reasoning behind that ?

I had a giant LeTour III at one time .I loved the orange pearl paint . Beautiful ride,just a little tricky when it came to mount/dismount .


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## Eric Amlie

What's the standover height on that monster?


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## momo608

Dale Alan said:


> That is very interesting.What was the reasoning behind that ?
> 
> I had a giant LeTour III at one time .I loved the orange pearl paint . Beautiful ride,just a little tricky when it came to mount/dismount .





Your guess is as good as mine. Probably the product of a brainstorming meeting to increase sales. The guys and gals that used to do filet brazing there probably liked the idea. I wonder when it was that Chicago Schwinn employees knew the end was at hand. Sales were down but thousands of bikes were being sold up until the very end. The momentum of the Schwinn name is still going strong after all these years after the plant closing. Like someone said in another thread, many people not in the know, refer to all old bikes as Schwinn's.


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## momo608

Eric Amlie said:


> What's the standover height on that monster?




A hair over 37"

I uploaded these photos in a logical order and it turned into a jumble?


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## bricycle

Dang, that's huge!


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## rustjunkie

momo608 said:


> A hair over 37"
> 
> I uploaded these photos in a logical order and it turned into a jumble?




I think you can edit the post and rearrange the pics


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## Metacortex

momo608 said:


> [A one year only freak in the funeral colors of the last gasp of the Chicago Schwinn Continental. So sad!




The 28" Continental was available in '82 and '83. In 1983 and later the Continental was only shown in the "Family Bicycles" catalog so many people thought it had been discontinued in '82. Unfortunately so far none of the '83 through '85 Family Bicycle catalogs have been posted online.



> This frame is unusual as you can see being half electroforged and half filet brazed.




Thanks for posting the bare frame pics. Schwinn used fillet-brazing to make several of its less popular frames, probably because they couldn't cost justify the tooling for the electro-forging process. For example the  25" frame Continental was fillet-brazed in 1970, the '74-'77 Sprint had a fillet brazed bottom bracket and the Tandems up until '83 were mostly fillet-brazed as well.


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## bikecrazy

You sure do beautiful paintwork!


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## detroitbike

Here in Detroit they love these large Schwinns.
  Completely repainted the 28" bikes usually bring in 750-900.
   It always has to be black with gold though.


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## momo608

Metacortex said:


> The 28" Continental was available in '82 and '83. In 1983 and later the Continental was only shown in the "Family Bicycles" catalog so many people thought it had been discontinued in '82. Unfortunately so far none of the '83 through '85 Family Bicycle catalogs have been posted online.




I have seen a couple early 83 serial number electroforged bikes but nothing showing they were "officially" offered in the 1983 model year. I have heard this before, I think from you, but it seems this has taken on almost mythical undertones to the story. No catalogs showing this can be found? The story I have read is when the Chicago plant was closed the elecrtoforging fixtures were sold for scrap. I don't know what to believe. The provable existence of late 1983 and newer electroforged frames would go a long way to show something is up, and that the generally accepted belief that no more electroforged frames were made beyond early 1983 might be wrong. I think Murray has been credited with completing left over Chicago frames, but if true, could they also have been stamping newer serial numbers onto old frames? Lots of questions I have no answer for.


http://schwinncruisers.com/catalogs/1983.html


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## Metacortex

momo608 said:


> I have seen a couple early 83 serial number electroforged bikes but nothing showing they were "officially" offered in the 1983 model year. I have heard this before, I think from you, but it seems this has taken on almost mythical undertones to the story. No catalogs showing this can be found?




Schwinn changed to offering multiple separate catalogs starting in 1983, including one for Lightweights, BMX, Family and Paramounts. They also had a "Full Line" catalog that included the Lightweights, BMX and Family catalogs together. So far only the '83 Lightweights catalog has been posted online* causing some people to incorrectly believe only those bikes were offered that year. I have one of the '83 full line catalogs and just snapped a couple of relevant pics. For example here is the page from the 1983 full line catalog describing all of the Schwinn catalogs that year:






Here is the cover page of the Family Bicycles catalog:





And finally here you can see the Continental listed in the '83 Family Bicycles catalog, showing the continued availability of the 28" frame:





Schwinn continued to build bikes in Chicago until at least mid-1983, after which they transferred the EF tooling to Murray in TN. I have documented several '83 Chicago built Continentals, which I previously posted about here: http://www.schwinnbikeforum.com/index.php?topic=6188.msg156098#msg156098

*I just found a copy of the '83 Family Bicycles catalog online here: http://www.bloggingadeadhorse.com/schwinn_family_1983Cat.php

Click on the cover page to see links to all of the pages. That site also has the '84 and '85 Family catalogs as well as BMX and others not found on the more well-known Schwinn catalog sites...


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## momo608

Great stuff! Thank you for the effort. It makes sense Schwinn would have had a 1983 Catalog in the works for EF bikes in 1982 if they were not certain of the fate of the Chicago plant, and knowing 83 dated bikes exist this all makes perfect sense. Only one question remains, was EF tooling really relocated to Murray? Do any frames exist dated to a time that proves they could not have been made at the Chicago plant. This is what I based what I thought I knew on the fate of EF tooling.  

Great article by the way if you want to read up on the electoforging process, SEE it here

http://sheldonbrown.com/varsity.html

"These changes were not to be, however. The E/F machinery is gone, and the people who knew how to operate it have scattered. When the factory was torn down, many of the fixtures were scrapped. The welding equipment was sold, no doubt being used to make some sort of tubular product. A very unique bicycle manufacturing process, one that provided millions of bicycles ridden and still being ridden perhaps billions of fun-filled miles, has slipped into oblivion. Since the process will never be revived, all we can do is look back and preserve the process in our minds, so those wonderful, and still plentiful, bicycles and the visionary engineers who created them retain their rightful place in bicycle history."

"My thanks to Frank Brilando, former Senior Vice President of Engineering at Schwinn, for his incredible contributions to the Schwinn Bicycle Co. and bicycle design. We all owe him so much, and his many insights helped me write this article."


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## Metacortex

momo608 said:


> Only one question remains, was EF tooling really relocated to Murray? Do any frames exist dated to a time that proves they could not have been made at the Chicago plant.




The Chicago plants were closed by the end of '83 and yet some EF bikes like the Varsity were produced through 1985: http://www.bloggingadeadhorse.com/schwinn_family_1985Cat.php





I've seen Murray-built 1984 Continentals and '84-'85 Varsity models and they had several tell-tale differences in the frames as compared to Chicago-built bikes.


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## momo608

Metacortex said:


> The Chicago plants were closed by the end of '83 and yet some EF bikes like the Varsity were produced through 1985: http://www.bloggingadeadhorse.com/schwinn_family_1985Cat.php
> I've seen Murray-built 1984 Continentals and '84-'85 Varsity models and they had several tell-tale differences in the frames as compared to Chicago-built bikes.




"tell-tale differences in the frames"  Can anyone provide photos of this?, and I don't mean blurry Schwinn photos, man those catalogs can be infuriating if you are looking for details.

I have one of those 90's Chinese Stingrays, from a distance it looks like the old EF. Upon close inspection it's clear that it is not. We should be able to spot very easily what's going on with these 84-85 lightweights by looking at where the bottom bracket meets the chain stays. If that is not the same as the old EF, all bets are off.


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## Metacortex

momo608 said:


> "tell-tale differences in the frames"  Can anyone provide photos of this?




You can see some detailed pics showing the differences in a 1984 Murray-built Continental here: http://thecabe.com/forum/threads/can-you-help-me-identify-this-schwinn-continental.62180/

The differences are mainly in the bottom bracket and chainstays, but I think the top of the seat mast is slightly different as well. As you can see they don't really have an EF bottom bracket, only the headtube appears to use EF construction.


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## momo608

Metacortex said:


> You can see some detailed pics showing the differences in a 1984 Murray-built Continental here: http://thecabe.com/forum/threads/can-you-help-me-identify-this-schwinn-continental.62180/
> 
> The differences are mainly in the bottom bracket and chainstays, but I think the top of the seat mast is slightly different as well. As you can see they don't really have an EF bottom bracket, only the headtube appears to use EF construction.




I am not seeing a headtube shot? at least one showing where the top tube and down tube join it. The dropouts look like the EF joints but that can be reproduced to look that way with a mig welder. The added on cable stops look the EF way but that probably does not require EF equipment. The bottom bracket is the killer for me. I edited my post probably while you were working on this to point out the importance of that. 

I'm siding with the notion that this is not an electroforged frame. The bottom bracket is the most important part in proving what we have here. We would know at a glance if they were using the precast parts so critical to a EF frame.  As we know Headtube joints can be made to look EF by alternative welding methods. 

Again, thank you for your efforts, great stuff!


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## Metacortex

momo608 said:


> I'm siding with the notion that this is not an electroforged frame. The bottom bracket is the most important part in proving what we have here. We would know at a glance if they were using the precast parts so critical to a EF frame.  As we know Headtube joints can be made to look EF by alternative welding methods.




Unfortunately I don't have a Murray-built "EF" frame to examine in person right now. It would be very telling to sandblast one and/or cut it apart for further examination. I can't say for sure that the headtube joints are EF, but Schwinn appears to say they are in the 1984 Family Bicycles catalog:


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## momo608

Metacortex said:


> Unfortunately I don't have a Murray-built "EF" frame to examine in person right now. It would be very telling to sandblast one and/or cut it apart for further examination. I can't say for sure that the headtube joints are EF, but Schwinn appears to say they are in the 1984 Family Bicycles catalog:




I would think you would be able to tell by looking into the head tube and bottom bracket. Conflicting info for sure. These bikes must be fairly rare, I look at bikes for sale all the time and haven't seen any of these. No one has one of these bikes here?


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## dave429

I bought a Schwinn 26" frame bike once for the parts and that seemed very large. You would need to be an NBA player to ride the 28". Nice restore job done on that bike!


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## dave429

This is for sale locally
http://eauclaire.craigslist.org/bik/5424042839.html
Probably only a 26" frame but still a huge bike. It almost seems like these large frames survived better than smaller ones.


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## Metacortex

That is indeed a 26" frame, the 28" models were only made in '82 and '83.


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## momo608

dave429 said:


> This is for sale locally
> http://eauclaire.craigslist.org/bik/5424042839.html
> Probably only a 26" frame but still a huge bike. It almost seems like these large frames survived better than smaller ones.




The taller the bike the fewer the riders that can straddle it. If you are shorter than 6', you would probably hate it. I have a bunch of these and most of them suffered wear from being poorly stored and neglected, but that probably is the fate of a lot of old bikes once the tires go bad.

If anyone wants a 1984 and 5 Schwinn family catalog, here they are! It says 2 pages on the 5 so I guess it's more of a brochure. I bought these myself. I'll be on the lookout for one of these lightweights seriously now. I will have to violate my if it ain't Chicago don't buy it rule.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Schwinn-198...046144?hash=item33b0a6b000:g:-koAAOxyE3pSFYVi

http://www.ebay.com/itm/original-19...796919?hash=item43e8ef2a77:g:dUoAAOSwnipWWF-d

BTW, the down tube on the 28" is 1 1/8" and no I do not ride the bike, I tested it out but it would be scary to bring this thing out on the roads. I'm on my toes straddling it. I like weird things especially if they are rare or extreme examples of something.


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