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Schwinn Base Coat

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Probably walking into the middle of a poo storm here but Schwinn didn’t use a gold base coat on these. I’ve seen a ‘57 Phantom where one side was hold and the other red. The red oxidizes and turns to a gold color
yep
 
its simple,all you have to do is look at what sun does to car paint in a place like texas, you see car ports all over the south non in minnesota,look at alot of southern muscle cars,painted white tops sun damage,alightweight bike was prolly keept inside/ballooners were left outside prolly lying down after the kickstand wasnt used,just get off and let it lay down,sound familiar?
 
I’ll try to find time to pull my ‘55 Opal red Vette out today. I always thought mine was as faded as they come, but some of the bikes posted in this thread are on a different level. I don’t think I have any gold (either from fading or scratches) on mine, but don’t mind sacrificing a bit of paint for scientific purposes.
 
Often times I wonder- Schwinn being such a large business for so long where are all the people who worked there and how come we have so few first hand accounts of anything? So much speculation. Even on products that were made only 30 or 40 years ago?
 
I know beans about this but if there were gold over silver then it seems one would expect to see gold in this protected area between the cantilever and top tube:

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also,. schwinn paint was sold in cans, including the silver base. Anyone ever see gold base?
Any catalogs showing cans of paint available?
 
Awesome! Bet you wish you still had it. Oh Well, Easy come go. Their's lots more where they came from. Ride On. Razin. The color looks to be more of a burnt orange than copper , but still looks good on this bike.
 
I know beans about this but if there were gold over silver then it seems one would expect to see gold in this protected area between the cantilever and top tube:

View attachment 1032839

also,. schwinn paint was sold in cans, including the silver base. Anyone ever see gold base?
Any catalogs showing cans of paint available?

I thought that shot was pretty interesting. I've never seen any Schwinn lit showing cans of their touch up paint until the 60's. The Opal Reds during these first few years definitely had a major flaw in it's chemical make up. I've also noticed that in these first few years the Red was also much darker than the Red on the 56 and later production, other than the Phantom's when they came out with the Opal paint. It seems the later Opals starting in 56 wasn't prone to this crazy fading issue.

Here are the shots of that 53 Traveler that rennfaron posted above. Great example of whatever is going on with this paint and seeing the paint on the steer tubes might tell the story.

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Maybe a paint chemist can answer the questions.

I'm a chemist and I answered this in post #10.

Are you 100% sure of that?
A true red does not use any other pigmentation to where the red would fade out leaving a gold color and red does not oxidize turning to gold.
This is incorrect. Paints are made up of many chemicals and may be a mixture of pigments. Red (like any color) can be a mixture of chemicals and pigments to give the exact color desired. As I already said, seems most likely that schwinn had a paint formulation in the mid '50s that was prone to chemical ageing where the pigment in the red region of the spectrum degraded/decomposed leaving other pigment(s) that did not decompose, which results in the gold color you are seeing in all the pictures. Again, use logic. How can you be seeing a gold base coat UNDER decals?
 
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