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dirtman

Finally riding a big boys bike
After getting some valuable info on these over in the main forum, I'll bring this here now since both of these bikes fit best in this forum.

I'm looking at putting two bikes together that I bought a part of a lot some time ago, one is mid to late 30's Cleveland Welding built Western Flyer, the other a Westfield, (possibly an Elgin), from either '39 or '40. ( I found several Elgin Headbadges but none match the 2 7/8" vertical screw holes in my frame).

As I did through the boxes of parts, I'm slowly sorting out the parts for each, plus a few boxes of likely unrelated parts.
For the WF, I seem to have everything but the handlebars and pedals, but do have a newer pair of cruiser type bars and a newer set of Union pedals. I have a new old stock set of both Davis and Western Flyer branded tires for this bike.

For the Elgin, I have a frame and fork, crankset, a pair of wheels which have box style rims and an Elgin air cooled rear hub and unknown smooth front hub. This bike came with what appears to be generic painted fenders with individual braces.

The only parts that appear to have been chrome on the Westfield are the hubs. All else looks to have been painted black. The original bars and pedals are also missing for this bike. The tires on the rims are shot, rotted away to not much more than threads and bits of rubber.

My question is, how were parts like cranks, stems, handlebars, and seat posts usually finished on these non-tank model bikes?

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Both stems I have appear to be completely unplated, both were painted, the WF stem was painted gray/silver, the Elgin's stem was black.
Both were pretty well rusted and I've soaked off the rust with Evaporust, leaving basically bare steel stems. There's no sign of chrome or nickel plating anywhere on these.

I also have a few other chrome plated stems but I suspect those are much newer, possibly from Schwinn bikes.

Considering the year, I have my doubts as to whether or not the rims that are with the Elgin belong with it, but after 80 years anything is possible.
The WF came from the original owner, and he swore all the parts with it are original except for the front hub and bars. His kid tore it down and gave it a rattle can paint job in the 1970's, he tore it back down to restore it 20 years after that and never went any further. I bought it along with all the other parts over 10 years ago.

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The cranks have been painted silver, but after removing the silver, they appear to be bare steel, with no sign of plating, even in between the bearings.
The chrome bits in this pic look out of place. The sprocket on the bike is thinner than the chrome replacement it came with.
None of the seat posts in this pic fit either bike, both likely had bent style 5/8" posts, with the WF using one of the adapters shown.
I have truss rods, both are dull or galvanized looking, and several upper truss brackets that I believe are likely for the Westfield.
 
Here's a few of the boxes and bags of parts that came with the two frames I got.
It looks to me like the guy had stripped a handful of bikes, both pre and post war, of various brands.
There's also a trash barrel full of misc. chainguards, kickstands, and fender braces.
He had the bottom bracket parts and headset parts sorted in ziplock bags.
There's a dozen or so prewar seat posts, a box of skip link sprockets, and a box of 1/2" chain sprockets.
Two boxes of chain, a bucket of 1/2" chain, and two boxes of bb cups.
It was roughly a full pickup truck load in all.


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Seat posts


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Master links and half links


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New Departure hub parts


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Milk crate full of small parts in bags


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headsets


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jars of small parts, bearings, and brackets
(Not sure what some of the bearing sizes fit? Some of those bearings are 3/8" balls.

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fender stays, rear racks.
Some of the older fender braces are way too long to fit a 26" bike


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chains
There are five types of 1" pitch chains, and a few even larger chains, possibly motorcycle?
There's also a box of very small link chain that doesn't match either 1/2" or 1" bike chain.


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48 to 52 tooth Sprockets
There's another box of misc. skip link sprockets that hadn't been unloaded yet.

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3/4" and 13/16" seat posts and shims


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5/8" seat posts


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wooden box full of small parts and bearings


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several boxes of older BB cups


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more bags of bearings
 
I almost forgot, there's four tubs full of headbadges that came with it all.
The headbadges were what I was there to see in the first place when I ended up buying the two bikes.
The Highway Patrol badge below belongs on the one Columbia, which is a complete bike, circa 1949 or so.
Out of almost 7,000 headbadges, not a one fits the Westfield built frame with its 2 7/8" vertical hole spacing, including one that says 'Westfield'.
The Roadmaster and Western Flyer badges fit the CWC frame.
A good many of the headbadges are imported as well, only about a quarter or so are American, with a good many of those likely being much older.
The last lot is all British, he's got them sorted in tubs by country and age in small bags sorted in ziplock bags.
There's one whole box with just Schwinn, and several bags of Columbia badges in brass and aluminum.
The headbadge lot filled the back seat of my crew cab Ford.
The rest filled the bed with the tailgate down.

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These are the two frames, as posted in the general forum before:
both have rather poor rattle can paint jobs, but that can be fixed.

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1936-39? CWC /Wester Flyer
(original color appears to be sort of a cranberry red color).


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1940 Westfield
Original color appears to be White with a brown/red headtube, that was painted over first with green, then red, then blue, ....and finally black.

This also came with the lot, I was told the headbadge read Highway Patrol

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This one is a bit rough, but its ridable. The handlebars and stem are painted silver, most of the bike is repainted with a brush.
The grips and pedals obviously don't belong but the tires are vintage Carlisle Lightnings and they still hold air despite missing a few chunks of tread here and there.
The guy I got it from said it belonged to his brother and that it originally had a Hiway Patrol headbadge, the one in the pic above.
It was either that or a Columbia badge, either fit and match the paint scheme from what I found.
 
Its sorted in that everything is separated in ziplock bags but the guy saved everything, good or bad.
I've been slowly going one bag at a time and getting rid of the junk parts. There's lots of junk parts that he stored right along with the good parts. Sprockets with missing teeth, bad bearings, broken hubs, rusty spokes, etc.

None of the parts are cleaned, he saved them as they came out off the bike.
A lot of the parts were bagged but the majority of the boxes and bags are not labeled as to what they came from or what's in each box. He also had new parts boxed up with unrelated, old rusty parts.

He sorted things like bearings and other small parts but poured loose ball bearings all into one container.
The good thing is that I'll likely never have to buy ball bearings again, there's about 20 Mayonaise jars full of new loose ball bearings, the down side is that every one is a combination of sizes ranging from 1/8" to 3/8".

What bike used 3/8" ball bearings?


Any idea what headbadge for a Westfield frame had 2 7/8" screw hole spacing?
 
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Here's a few more parts dug out of the boxes:

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26t 5 point (There are a few of these in green as well but those are well used or worn out)
Any idea what these were used on?


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22t 6 point
Any idea what these were used on?


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48T Stars, AMF? Roadmaster?
A few of these are marked in wax pencil '59 AMF and '58 Roadmaster.


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22t green - There are a few of these, both in 22t and 26t, all are painted the same shade of green. One is black.
They appear to be new. There are also several 26t sprockets that match the one on the black Westfield frame also in
green. Along with several pair of handlebars, cranks, seat posts and stems all painted the same color.


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Forged chrome stems, there are three or four versions of these, all are chrome.
I'm guessing these are most likely Schwinn?
 
The solid one is Elgin, I believe. And the skiptooth star also. Are you selling any of the 26 tooth solid ones?
Johnny
 
Here's a few more I dug out today. The Schwinn rings are likely for a pair of 50's middleweight frames I also got from the same place.
Am I right to think that all the 22t skiptooth rings are likely off ladies models? or are they off smaller bikes? Although there's a few smaller sprockets, I didn't find a lot of smaller bike parts. There is a few 24 and 28h hub shells but they've been gutted for parts.

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8 hole 52t - Unknown - Likely newer, chrome is not as good as the older stuff


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Schwinn 46t


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48t (Was tagged Rollfast LW)


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48t


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15t - 18t (18t was tagged Columbia)


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20t

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22t (Was tagged Rollfast)
 
Found some more headbadges in another box packed away separately, these area all for a much larger diameter headtube than
any of the others so far. They were in a plastic shoe box marked simply "Old".
Some of these are duplicates of what I found in one of the big tubs of badges. The 'Red Wing' badge looks very similar to another marked Iver Johnson.
All of these except the 'The Liberty' badge are heavy brass.

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Left to right from the top:
Row 1 > American Standard Columbus Cycle & Sporting Goods Columbus, OH / Red Wing New England Bicycle Co. Worcester, Mass. / Crescent / Rollfast / The Liberty Cycle NY, USA / Tribune Mod 28, Westfield Mfg. Co. Westfield, Mass / The Overland Special
Row 2 > Century, Century Cycle Co / The Deluxe Aero-Flyer Roadster, Cecil Walker / Gray Hound FA Baker Co, NY / Rollfast / North Star United Cycle Co Hartford, CT / Peerless / Queen City FA Baker Co. NY
 
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