ricobike
Wore out three sets of tires already!
As a continuation of the Weird X on Wasp thread, here are some more weird X's that I've seen in the past and am now questioning what they were for.
I'm restoring a Girls Opal Green Starlet with a serial dated 11/29/55. The bike looks like a completely untouched original and when I took it apart I found an X marked on the fork tube in paint. I've seen this several times before and I have a couple of forks in my parts bin that have this. I've often wondered what it was, I figured maybe a replacement fork or maybe someone just marked it themselves. But this bike looks to be all original so I'm wondering if that's really the case. And I've seen enough of them now that I'm thinking it's a factory marking.
I found 2 other forks that have this marking on them in my stash and I'm sure I've seen this several other times when rebuilding bikes. I've attached a picture of the forks. All the forks in the picture are balloon tire forks. The blue fork came from probably a Wasp with a serial dated 1955 or 57. The red fork that's painted blue I bought off a table at a swap and it was marked that it was from a Wasp also. The radiant red color underneath would probably make it a later fork, probably 59 and up.
Anyone seen these X's on fork tubes before and have any theories on what they are for? A thought I have is that it was a way to keep balloon and middleweight forks from getting mixed up similar to what we were thinking in the Wasp thread.
I'm restoring a Girls Opal Green Starlet with a serial dated 11/29/55. The bike looks like a completely untouched original and when I took it apart I found an X marked on the fork tube in paint. I've seen this several times before and I have a couple of forks in my parts bin that have this. I've often wondered what it was, I figured maybe a replacement fork or maybe someone just marked it themselves. But this bike looks to be all original so I'm wondering if that's really the case. And I've seen enough of them now that I'm thinking it's a factory marking.
I found 2 other forks that have this marking on them in my stash and I'm sure I've seen this several other times when rebuilding bikes. I've attached a picture of the forks. All the forks in the picture are balloon tire forks. The blue fork came from probably a Wasp with a serial dated 1955 or 57. The red fork that's painted blue I bought off a table at a swap and it was marked that it was from a Wasp also. The radiant red color underneath would probably make it a later fork, probably 59 and up.
Anyone seen these X's on fork tubes before and have any theories on what they are for? A thought I have is that it was a way to keep balloon and middleweight forks from getting mixed up similar to what we were thinking in the Wasp thread.