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This is my first venture into lightweight bikes, so I figured this was a good bike to start with. I’ve been wanting a skinny tire bike to ride for a while now and prewar bikes are my favorite. When I saw this one for sale here on the CABE, and it was very close to my house, I jumped on it.
My initial hope was to do a little cleaning and then ride it. But while cleaning it I decided to delve into it further.
Here are the pics I took last Sunday when I picked it up.
stunned. What a great professional job. Everyone knows that the hat-in-the-ring decal was from USA in the French air force? Dumb question. The thing that looks like a counter on the front axle is not a counter?
Nice bike! I've had a couple of these early New Worlds (still have a Maroon '41) and I love the way they ride. The forks on them seem to really absorb the road. A collector may have had it in the past and harvested the DD setup sans the shell. These shells bring some coin themselves because most DDs were just sold as a conversion kit, versus a factory offering which the DD shell denotes.
Just saw that you bought it on the Cabe. No intention to throw shade at anybody if they did buy it for the two-speed (though, it could have been gone for 30+ years at this point) I got my only DD kit from a New World and now it is on my Hawthorne 5-bar.
stunned. What a great professional job. Everyone knows that the hat-in-the-ring decal was from USA in the French air force? Dumb question. The thing that looks like a counter on the front axle is not a counter?
94th Aero Squadron, U.S. Air Service in WW1. This was the "Hat in the Ring" Rickenbacker squadron. The image was well-known to Americans for a number of years because the 94th was considered an "elite" unit and Rickenbacker was the "Ace of Aces" and a celebrity. He led a very colorful life and was well-known from 1918 through his death in the 1970s. The image is a rebus of the phrase "Throw One's Hat in the Ring" - to join the fight. It suited both the 94th for WW1 and it served Schwinn in that Schwinn was "throwing its hat in the ring" of lightweight, adult bikes.
You are correct that Americans flew with the French Air Service earlier, and some even flew with the British.
I bought it as a 1 speed, so it’s not a problem for me. It will stay a 1 speed unless I can find the parts to convert in back to its former 2 speed glory. I was genuinely surprised To find the DD hub.And after seeing that the paint loss/damage on the frame made total sense.
Front rim is now apart. And after cleaning a few of the spokes I may have hit a wall. The front wheel is not as nice as the rear was. The spokes have a lot of deep pitting so I may need to just bite the bullet and buy some new spokes. I’m still waiting on my new tires/tubes to arrive anyhow. I’ll just have to “dirty up” new spokes to match the rest of the wheel
Front rim is now apart. And after cleaning a few of the spokes I may have hit a wall. The front wheel is not as nice as the rear was. The spokes have a lot of deep pitting so I may need to just bite the bullet and buy some new spokes. I’m still waiting on my new tires/tubes to arrive anyhow. I’ll just have to “dirty up” new spokes to match the rest of the wheel
Let me know length and I will send you old cadmium spokes for the cost of shipping. I have all varieties of 26" takeoffs and I can't imagine I don't have the correct size.
Thanks for the generous offer, but I decided to just get new stainless double butted spokes for both wheels. In the meantime, a friend had a set of used spokes that he just replaced, so I ran to his place at lunch to get them. With my temporary placeholder spokes in hand I just reassembled the cleaned up front rim and hub. And now the wheel just needs to be trued. I really wanted to see what it looks like fully cleaned up as I get very impatient waiting on parts to arrive.
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