Another Schwinn Serial Number

[tim elder]

Just picked up this Liberty badged cantilever and it turns out to be a dimpled whizzer frame. Has a tapered kickstand, flat Lobdell rims with heavy duty spokes and a forebrake, rear is New Departure. Frame is damaged at the drop outs as shown and the pedal has been welded to the crank arm. Serial number as shown in the picture is J02 31. This has just the four numbers with a space between the 2 and the 3, plain as day no other stamping. Am I looking at a 1946 or possible 45 frame, or did I just not look at the right serial number charts?

 

[GTs58]

Interesting piece for sure and those drop outs are gnarly! I'm going with 1945 but could be a 46 since no 1946's have been identified here as a 1945. Since Schwinn stamped all the parts with a serial number before the frame was built it's really impossible to say when a Schwinn was built. Have you cut off the pedal and pulled the crank yet? I'd like to see it and that may, if stamped with a casting date, give you a close estimate when the bike was actually built. I do see a lightly stamped misaligned 4 in your serial number void, not that that's going to make any difference. Maybe @Obi-Wan Schwinnobi can shed some light on this early pre-post war frame.

Here's a war time New World and the owner never posted the crank info. I have the crank from a New World war time piece SN J99657 and it's dated 1943.

 

[mr.cycleplane]

In my opinion-what I have noticed.....the crank won't tell you much as it looks to have been changed. I have been under the impression that the late 1945/early 46 crank was a dog leg much like the prewar schwinn crank-the only difference being a thicker/straight sided in the area near the pedals. As this is a whizzer-anything might be up for grabs! As far as a date on the crank-the version I am mentioning used symbol coding in the castings-things like a diamond or club or spade or triangle-like those found on the bottom bracket cups and bottom bearing race pieces of that period. This didn't last but a few years post war anyway.

 

[tim elder]

No markings on crank, indeed a newer one. No markings on bottom bracket cups or bearing races.

 

[GTs58]

No markings on crank, indeed a newer one. No markings on bottom bracket cups or bearing races.

Bummer! Can you verify the type of joints on the chain stays at the BB shell? They don't look Electro-forged to me. Schwinn was doing a full blown EF head tube with EF top and down tubes to the head tube along with the seat post being EF to the BB shell on the J series war time New World frames. The chain stays were still hand welded to the BB. The A and B serial 1946 frames had EF chain stays.

 

[tim elder]

 

[GTs58]

Wow! Those are the cleanest and nicest EF chain stays to BB joints I've ever seen! They must have really tried hard on the first ones they did and then said the heck with cleaning up the mess, to much work. lol Thanks for the pics.