GTs58
I'm the Wiz, and nobody beats me!
It seems the LeTour was built in Greenville in part of the 80's. Schwinn closed that plant in 1990.
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1960-to 1996 Schwinn 10 to 15 speed lightweight bikes.
- Thread starter John Gialanella
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It seems the LeTour was built in Greenville in part of the 80's. Schwinn closed that plant in 1990.
Yes! That's when Schwinn took a swipe at the lightweights, other than the Paramounts. And if you believe the rumors, the overall bikes from this plant were awful......at best spotty construction. A company towards the end of the line.......
They're stating that the 1986 LeTour has the latest European componentry. I'm not sure about that year in memory, but I highly doubt they abandoned Shimano for Euro gear sets. I don't remember any of their bikes having Campy anything, for example......so what "European componentry".....Weinmann brakes?
As was wisely said earlier.....when you lined up the standard Schwinn 10/12 spd bikes against the likes of a Peugeot for example, it showed how sad/dated Schwinn's efforts were. Too late and a few dollars short of real racing bikes.
I bow to the Paramount only by reputation....never seen one, never touched one and never ridden one. They never entered Euro racing so their only claim to fame could be US racing. Could they hold their own against the SBDU Raleighs @Ilkeston.....I can't answer that since they didn't officially race against them.
Kevin
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Unfortunately, the foam handlebars were kind of a rage starting in the late '70s and continuing into the '80s. I have this on my bone stock 1980 Raleigh Competition GS. When I get around to restoring the bike, doubtful I'm going to replace that foam with new. I think it was one of the dumber 'innovations' of the time. Stem shifters, yes, foam on the handlebars, nah.
Kevin
Eric Amlie
Wore out three sets of tires already!
I have several of the Greenville bikes from '87 & '88. LeTour, Prelude, Tempo, Super Sport, & Circuit.
I don't know how they stack up against the European(or Japanese) bikes, but there's certainly nothing wrong with them that I can tell.
This '87 Circuit is one of my favorites.
Schwinn Sales West
Cruisin' on my Bluebird
It's gets a little confusing when we talk about a MODEL NAME that was used by different owners of the Schwinn Brand during the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's. The lugged frame Le Tour series of bikes was built in different states, and countries during that period of time. It was also built by different manufacturers.
You would not call a Buick an Oldsmobile because they are brand names sold by General Motors. They were simply different brand names of the parent company which was the manufacturer of both brands (and others as well).
So.......why call a Le Tour, a Panasonic?
Panasonic is another brand name (just like Buick and Oldsmobile). The Japanese manufacturer is called National Bicycle and they built high quality (not cheap) bicycles and parts for many different companies. Panasonic was just one of the brand names they used. They also built (most of) Schwinn's PDG bikes (Paramount Design Group).
It's hard to keep the focus when we mix up the ingredients.
John
You would not call a Buick an Oldsmobile because they are brand names sold by General Motors. They were simply different brand names of the parent company which was the manufacturer of both brands (and others as well).
So.......why call a Le Tour, a Panasonic?
Panasonic is another brand name (just like Buick and Oldsmobile). The Japanese manufacturer is called National Bicycle and they built high quality (not cheap) bicycles and parts for many different companies. Panasonic was just one of the brand names they used. They also built (most of) Schwinn's PDG bikes (Paramount Design Group).
It's hard to keep the focus when we mix up the ingredients.
John
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Quakertownrich
Finally riding a big boys bike
'89 Schwinn 974, Ultegra groupset
An example of Schwinns' PDG aluminum frame effort.
'72 Schwinn Sports Tourer
...and many more.
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Schwinn499
I live for the CABE
That Sierra Brown ST is gorgeous
I wasn't mixing up anything. I said the Panasonic frames had a short run with the early Schwinn LeTours. Especially when the Taiwanese frames could be had cheaper. And I was ONLY referencing LeTours and Super LeTours in this discussion because they're the only ones I'm familiar with. If you have anything to add to the 'LeTour' part of that, great.
And yeah, after the early 80's the LeTours and Super LeTours had blurred parentage. It was all about unit cost at that point and the '70s adult 10/12 spd boom was over and morphing into MTB's and crossover hybrids.
Kevin
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Glad to know they were not all lemons. The rumors about the bikes from that plant may be grossly exaggerated?
Nothing stacked up against the Euro bikes. All you had to do was pick up a Schwinn 10/12 spd with one hand and then a good Euro bike from the same vintage. That isn't to say the Schwinn's weren't beautiful, they were. But why pedal with more weight if you don't have to?
Kevin
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Schwinn Sales West
Cruisin' on my Bluebird
Schwinn needed a popularly priced lightweight line of bicycles to compete with the Asian brands being sold on Schwinn Dealership sales floors. The Peugeot and Motobecane European brands were not the heavy hitters. Ben Lawee the U.S. Motobecane distributor recognized, this and developed his own Asian built brand under the Univega brand. The European brands were priced right, and light in weight but never came close to the fit and finish of the top Asian built bikes. The fact that the European bikes mostly came with French or Italian threading parts groups and unique parts sizing did not help their sales in the U.S. market.
Schwinn Bicycle Company was slow to react to the changing lightweight market. What they needed was a light in weight, Varsity/Continental "priced models". It needed to be built in the U.S.A. to help with production lead times to fill dealer orders. It was cost effective to air freight small parts like derailers, hubs, chains, etc. It took several years of research, factory build up, and employee training for bicycles to start flowing out the door. Greenville, MS. was the choice for the new Schwinn factory. I never visited that Schwinn factory in person, but my coworker and later a business partner, Dave Staub (SSW GM) did visit the factory on several occasions. Mississippi was a "right to work" state and that was a big reason in Schwinn's choice of location after suffering the UAW Chicago strike. The factory was isolated, and difficult to efficiently ship goods in and out of due to location. It had a limited work force, which would later become an Achillies heel.
The Greenville factory was tasked with building only two different product styles. Yes, they built many different model names, but they all fell into one of two production groups. They built steel framed "investment cast" lug models or welded "aluminum models". The aluminum models (the three-digit number models) were built from 7000 series aluminum tubing. The focus of this series was to give dealers something they could sell "head-to-head" with Trek and Cannondale models. Schwinn's engineering made the choice to use the 7000 series tubing because they determined that the frames needed to be stress relived (heat treated) after they were welded together. The quality of the stress relieving was not consistent, and it caused the top and down tubes on some bikes to distort/bow/warp. It was a cosmetic problem, not a structural problem, but a serious issue.
Investment casting that previously had only been used in "pro level" priced frames was developed to bring the price down into the high production lower priced frames. It was a large improvement in lowering the price point of this lugged frame technology. IMO, the Greenville factory would never have been built without this new at the time investment casting technology. The bottom bracket shell, the seat tube cluster, and a "uni-head" were all cast parts. The two head lugs and the head tube are only "cast one steel part" not three parts. They were so smooth they did not require any hand touch up. The frame tubes had small indentions under the lug joint that held a small low melting temperature pellet of brazing material. The frames were set up in a fixture and heated to melt the pellet. The advantage was almost no employee hand work in brazing the frames were required. This new frame building method proved very efficient at producing new lugged frames at a lower labor cost.
Even with the latest automated production wheel building equipment, you still need to have skilled employees that understand the process, and how to adjust the machinery. IMO, Schwinn never figured out how to build lightweight quality wheels in Greenville, MS. Nobody from the Chicago factory wanted to move to Greenville. Dealers had to pull the wheels and tires off of a new uncrated bikes, and bench true each wheel to make sure it was properly tensioned, true, and hub centered. Every time I talked to any Schwinn employee that had just came back, they always mentioned the same thing, about the brown muddy shower water at the local hotel. Rudy Schwinn spent a lot of his time getting the new factories in Budapest (Cespel) and Greenville, MS. up and running, but he needed more help and support.
Let's talk about the Schwinn Paramount line at another time. Paramount's have been raced all over the world for the past 80 to 90 years. Please do not confuse multi million dollar sponsorships and paid professional riders with the quality of a product. Not many riders race on steel frames anymore so it's understandable why you do not see Paramount's being widely raced today at the pro levels.
Thank you for your interest in Schwinn's lightweight models
John
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