1943 Schwinn Wartime New World - 23" large frame w/ lots of black out parts

[rennfaron]

Pretty good detective work! Changes were made. The wear marks tell all. So if it was a coaster than the caliper brakes were added later. Wonder the reasoning why the rear is mounted backward.

@GTs58 said he has seen the rear caliper mounted on the inside of the stays a couple times before and still no idea why. It would be my first time seeing it.

 

[1motime]

War time. Labor time was of the essence. Every hour counted Minimum of time spent filing

 

[Oilit]

I figured the black-out "Schwinn-Built" calipers had to be original, but I can't fault your reasoning, the mis-matched rims put it beyond question. With a Superior rim (pre-war?), a black-out caliper and war tires, now I'm wondering if maybe this was somebody's transportation during the war and that's when the work was done. Are you going to set it back up as a two speed?

 

[rennfaron]

It is fun to try and put the pieces back together, but sometimes impossible to fully know the story. I would really like to put it back to 2 speed condition, but we will see. It would be a pretty killer setup. Tracking down that in blackout and a white rim will take a bit.

 

[SirMike1983]

If it isn't original as it is, then you are a little more free to build it up the way that would best suit you. Maybe consider building your own wheelset for rider purposes and just set aside and preserve what you already have. A set of Superior rims laced to a pre-war Sturmey AW and a Schwinn script front hub would really bring it to life.

If you live in a flat area, the large-flange single speed freewheel is a great choice. They're very smooth and efficient-running hubs.

I love ND hubs, but the 2-speed and 3-speed ND set ups are over-priced for what they do for you as a riding machine. It doesn't help that they're high-cachet ballooner parts. They're really for when you have to have a more "original" machine, and you'll certainly pay good money for them. I just think the AW set up gives more bang for the buck, especially if you already have hand brakes.

 

[Miq]

Nice wartime New World @rennfaron! I love the War tires and all the blackout parts!

 

[rennfaron]

More thoughts to unravel...

@GTs58 made an interesting observation (and corrected me below - per edits). Enamel rims aren't really the best for a caliper setup and are generally found on bikes with a drum setup or coaster brake setup. With a caliper setup they clamp and wear into the paint pretty good and also deposit the brake pad color in a nice ring on the sides. I was looking back at my archived NWs and I have about 11 NWs that have white enameled rims. During Wartime the rim options were "Schwinn Superior or Ivory Finish (white enamel)." (Edit - I read that as superior OR ivory finish - only option at this time was Ivory finish on a superior rim (no plating option)). So the white enameled rims were out there at this time, and I can only assume specific to only this time period as I have not found this spec (yet) in years before or after wartime. I assume it was a customer preference on which one they went with, but during wartime maybe supply limited even those options. So out of those 11 NWs I have on file 9 of those are wartime '42-'43 (from what I found) and the other two: one most likely is wartime because it has blackout parts (no stated date) and the other could be wartime but no stated date. So potentially 100% of those 11 are wartime. So again it appears that Ivory Finish (white enamel) was specifically a wartime option (Edit - confirmed it was). Of the 11 with white enamel, 3 had a caliper setup (generally just on the front). And we know that calipers on enamel weren't great, but per the supply issue, maybe that is just what had to go on there. Or maybe the customer is always right and they wanted painted rims and a caliper setup and the dealer just went with what they wanted. So on this bike, the blackout hub plus white rim appear to be original (blackout Finish + Ivory Enamel = wartime). The back rim definitely looks swapped. This would be quite the not-so-great setup out of the gates to have front/rear calipers on enameled rims. But if that option set was contingent on the restricted supply at that time, then that is what they had to go with. (Edit - pretty interesting that they had to go with a pretty bad setup because they weren't plating at that time.)

Thoughts?

 

[C M Gerlach]

More thoughts to unravel...

@GTs58 made an interesting observation. Enamel rims aren't really the best for a caliper setup and general found on bikes with a drum setup or coaster brake setup. With a caliper setup they clamp and wear into the paint pretty good and also deposit the brake pad color in a nice ring on the sides. I was looking back at my archived NWs and I have about 11 NWs that have white enameled rims. During Wartime the rim options were "Schwinn Superior or Ivory Finish (white enamel)." So the white enameled rims were out there at this time, and I can only assume specific to only this time period as I have not found this spec (yet) in years before or after wartime. I assume it was a customer preference on which one they went with, but during wartime maybe supply limited even those options. So out of those 11 NWs I have on file 9 of those are wartime '42-'43 (from what I found) and the other two: one most likely is wartime because it has blackout parts (no stated date) and the other could be wartime but no stated date. So potentially 100% of those 11 are wartime. So again it appears that Ivory Finish (white enamel) was specifically a wartime option. Of the 11 with white enamel, 3 had a caliper setup (generally just on the front). And we know that calipers on enamel weren't great, but per the supply, maybe that is just what had to go on there. Or maybe the customer is always right and they wanted painted rims and a caliper setup and the dealer just went with what they wanted. So on this bike, the blackout hub plus white rim appear to be original (blackout Finish + Ivory Enamel = wartime). The back rim definitely looks swapped. This would be quite the not-so-great setup out of the gates to have front/rear calipers on enameled rims. But if that option set was contingent on the restricted supply at that time, then that is what they had to go with.

Thoughts?

View attachment 1349641View attachment 1349642

 

[C M Gerlach]

Great bike,
I have some blackout hubs, rims from a wartime british thing...would be perfect match for your project..pm if you care

 

[GTs58]

Looks like you can see finishing filing done around the frame joints through the paint around the head tube joint.

I noticed that too! All the war time J series serials that had the electro-forged head tubes and tube joints I've noted happened to be on the 21" frames. I think this is the first 23" war time J serial #'d piece so far. New tooling would be needed to stamp out the larger 23" frame head tube pieces and it appears they weren't that far ahead yet. The seat tube is EF to the BB though.

As far as the war time rim option on that spec sheet, I'm seeing just the Superior that was painted Ivory, no other option. There is a freewheel hub option, caliper brake option but no plated rim option. That definitely seems like a catch-22 situation.