Pre-war Fork Stops

[Freqman1]

In the for sale section is a '41 DX with a springer that has the fork stop on the downtube but pretty close to the headtube. I have a '39 DX springer that also has the fork stop. The fork stop is a small metal tube welded to teh frame with little rubber bumpers on each end of the tube. If you go to the home page of this site you will see a link to Schwinn serial #s. Also contained in this link is info on determining frame dating by year. Under the heading "Telltale Frame Designs (4.) it says "1941 Deluxe had a a metal tube welded onto the headtube to protect the tank from being dented by the springer. 1941 was the ONLY year for this."

So a few of questions here. First is the Deluxe being referred to an Autocycle or is this any 'deluxe' frame? Second if it is a cantilever frame is this fork stop actually on the headtube or is it on the downtube? Next if this reference was strictly for the cantilever frame then when were these put on DXs? Were they ever put on straight bars? I would surmise they were put on DXs starting with the first ones in '39 and running through '41 (springers only). I recently sold a '39 DX bare frame and it did not have the fork stop so did Schwinn run these in batches? It would be interesting to see the serial # correlation regarding this. OK I'm done, your turn! v/r Shawn

 

[Talewinds]

Hey I was going to inquire about the same sorta thing when you brought it up in the other thread this afternoon. I really thought all the 39's had that fork-stop initially, but I've collected photos, many from this site of '39 DX's both with, and without the fork-stop.
I bought said '39 DX frame from you and indeed it does NOT have the fork-stop. I've removed the finish down to bare metal and there's no indication that there was ever a stop brazed onto the frame.

 

[ohdeebee]

My original '39 DX does not have stops but is neither a tank model or a springer model. Perhaps Schwinn built frames specifically to go with both the tank and springer ( we can refer to it as a deluxe frame) and others for the bare frame models. Of course, buyers could always add on these parts from the dealer. That being the case, some (non deluxe) frames may have been later equipped with the tank and/or springer at the dealer and not the factory which would account for the discrepancy among the frames. This same logic could be applied to all of the different frame styles since they all could be bought or ordered as deluxe frame models or bare frame models and then upgraded by the dealer.

 

[old hotrod]

And then the dealer would slide on the rubber bumper around the frame on bikes without the tube stop...