Hi
@Euphman06
I agree, 4256HCW. I'm also fairly sure I've dated it wrong, I'm sorry about that.
Thanks, I just had an epiphany looking back to correcting my listing for your bike.
Take HCW. When Huffman use these three letter codes, H always appears, so is likely to be Huffman. W is probably for Western Auto.
We have examples of HAW, HBW and yours, HCW, which are all Western Auto. Unfortunatly, only about 50% of the serial numbers I have have fork dates, and we're not sure how these correspond, whether they are a bicycle production date, or a fork manufacture date (so an unknown date before actual manufacture). We also don't know how many forks are replacements (we know they get damaged quite often).
Anyway, looking at the chart I've compiled, I've just noticed that bikes with an A in the centre of the code are generally 1939, B 1940, C 1941.
I have one 1938 fork date recorded, and that is just a serial number with no code.
In 1942 we move onto military bike G519 production. Their serial numbers start D, and they helpfully have 1942 stamped on the BB. I've read that D stood for Dayton, the brand name on the bike, but I'm thinking that may be a coincidence, and D is 1942.
From D, somewhere between June and Sept 1942, the letter changes to H for all Huffman bikes. This was a Government requirement, since headbadges were deleted, and the models were common, so Westfield went to W (for civilian bikes only) at about the same time.
H continues through to the end of my records in 1945.
I'm going to have to reorganise my listings, to see if that makes sense, but it's a job for later this week.
If what I've said is correct (and it's a work in progress, as you can tell), then HCW would be sometime in 1941. Sorry to have messed up.
Best Regards,
Adrian