Roadmaster Luxury Liners

[Freqman1]

Phil and I collaborated briefly about doing an article. As you can see by the thread there wasn't much input from others regarding info. It would be nice to get this started again but input is needed from those that have these early (1948-53) LLs. V/r Shawn

 

[silvertonguedevil]

I'm looking at buying one back East and I was trying to do some research and also trying to figure out what year it is and I ran across this thread. It seemed like it had a good head of steam and that's why I asked.

Any possibility of helping a guy date his soon-to-be purchase? The serial number under the crank is C44423 AC

Any help is greatly appreciated!!

 

[Freqman1]

The serial # located underneath the crank hanger will give you the year. The differences in the years are primarily with the rack/tailight and decals. V/r Shawn

 

[THEGOLDENGREEK]

Hi PHil this is awesome you started this thread on the Roadmaster luxury liner because i have 3 of them . None of them are replicas. They are original ones. I have 2 black and red ones and one Green christmas edition. Im going to try to post some pics of the bikes along with the serial numbers to the bikes and maybe i can finally find out the years to my bike. Thanxs again phil and keep up the good work.!

 

[silvertonguedevil]

The serial # located underneath the crank hanger will give you the year. The differences in the years are primarily with the rack/tailight and decals. V/r Shawn

The serial number is C44423 AC

 

[THEGOLDENGREEK]

Big question for you Phil Marshall. I spent some time today looking at pics online today under google images. And yes i do see some change in the roadmaster luxury liner. If you go looking on the web you will see some wierd ones with the horn on the left side of the tank and the rear rack looks like the repop one . And there are some pics of original ones with the rear rack with those truss rods in the back sticking out , kinda looking like the front end of the bike . And with the horn on the right side of the bike . Very wierd maybe it was there way of knowing what year the bikes were?

 

[ratina]

The serial number is C44423 AC

That's a 1950

 

[silvertonguedevil]

Awesome! Thank you!!

 

[silvertonguedevil]

So I've been deep in the trenches doing some investigative work on these creatures since I bought mine. This is what I've come up with so far....

-The CWC (or earlier style) made bike production ran from 1947-1953. AMF bought CWC in 1951 but the Luxury Liner continued to get the earlier styled CWC bike until and including the 1953 model year. In 1954, the Luxury Liner continued but was switched to the newer AMF style model.

Here is the earlier, CWC style:

And here is the later, AMF style:

You'll notice the the biggest differences are in the chainguard, the rack and the tank.

 

[silvertonguedevil]

In addition to that, I've found that the chainguards did not have any lettering on them up to and including the 1950 model year. 1950 was also the last year for the larger horn button located on the left side of the tank. The 1951 and later models had a smaller button that was located on the right side of the tank and instead of it being on the direct side of the tank, it was moved up towards the top of the tank.

The earlier 1947-1950 tank:

And the 1951-1953 tank: