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Wartime Schwinn New World Bikes - We Know You Have Them - Tell Us About Them!!

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@GenuineRides The patent angle is usually a good avenue to try. Here though, it doesn't work out because the Europeans had been using rear drop outs for several years before Schwinn started on the New Worlds in 1940. From what others have written, it seems like the Schwinn family spent some time in Europe in the mid 30s and saw how popular the lightweight bikes were becoming. They wanted to introduce some of the new fabrication methods they saw there too I bet.

When you search the Google Patents site for "Schwinn Rear Drop Outs" (Drop out separate words) you can find some Schwinn patents from the 1980's on frame designs. These patents "cite" the relevant "prior art" (old patents) that form the basis for the new ideas they are patenting. It is common practice and "good form" to cite the patents your company (the "assignee") has received in the area of technology you are making a new application in. When you look at the Schwinn patents for frame design, they just hand wave and write "common prior art" on the pictures of horizontal dropouts like figure 17 below. They clearly didn't come up with it, and the less they acknowledge that in their patent, the better for them. Schwinn Rear Wheel Drop Outs
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For example here's some stuff from the EU I found that is way before 1940 when Schwinn New Worlds started using rear dropouts. I have a feeling @dnc1 may know some more about when rear horz dropouts started in Europe. Clearly it was being done in the early 1930s there.

French 1930 Wonder Ultralight
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1934 Caminargent
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@GTs58 It's gotta be stuff like being ruthlessly frugal and saving and using up every part you make driving this. I think this era promoted a different mindset. Battling in a world war makes this even clearer. When resources get scarce, you accept parts you may not have chosen first when there were previously more choices... I love the "mixmaster" parts of the war era bikes. Wrong number of mudguard stays, odd shaped or completely missing mudguards, weird old bottom bracket shells with several year old hand stamps that Fred found in a closet, it's all good.:)
 
The @Djshakes list is the best thing going. It's not perfect but you can see why. I'm glad to build on the shoulders of work like that.
 
I'd like to mention that the rear fork ends with set screw shown on Bikepaulie's black early New World are not at all like the rear fork type ends on my 1940 (I think) Superior. Mine are like a Paramount track bike. (Superior number is B10287. Maybe 1939?)
 
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I just realized that all these dropout type rears are apparently the first use of the electroforged parts on lightweights. (I have very little knowledge of prewar fat tire Schwinns). The EF process was a big step in reducing the amount of hand labor in manufacturing. I assume some of the fusion welding on the New Worlds was gas welding, though the EF name might infer that the welding was Electric? My 1942 New World appears to have only the seat tube stub forged into the bottom bracket. My guess is that the smaller 3 piece crank bottom brackets had NO forged in stubs. This 1942 appears to have NO brass welding (brazing)) but I'd guess it may have some lead filler at the head tube. Just now tediously aka carefully removing several layers of brushed on black trying to figure out the original color. Steel wool and carb cleaner. This usually will not cut OE paint, but will remove over coats. ( I did it to a whole car once!)
 
Does anyone have a list of the factory used colors these could have been painted? I'll probably try to repaint this its original color if it seems like a color I like, or possibly another 1942 color.
 
BTW, Regarding this bike J99657: I looked on the ebay sellers list (elchivo1234) Adrian Martinez, from Wisconsin.Apparently he sold off the New Departure blackout hubs and blackout skip tooth crank set. Ebay makes it really hard to have contact between buyers and seller anymore, so I was not able to find out if any parts were left.
Even though my first motive to buy it was to use the fenders on my Superior, now I'm kinda leaning towards making this frame back into a bike.
 
Schwinn and several other American makers recognized a couple of years before WWII that "light roadster" or "sports touring" bicycles were proving to be popular in Europe, particularly in Britain. Those bicycles usually offered forward-facing rear dropouts, cable brakes, a choice of various hubs (the three speed Sturmey Archer K or AW is the classic), 26 inch wheels, side-pull caliper brake sets, and a more compact frame than a 28-inch wheel rod brake roadster. The English light roadster designs, in particular, tended to take what we would recognize as their early-modern well before Schwinn began making the New World.

By the late 1930s, the American bicycle market was heavily slanted toward children riding balloon tire bikes. The balloon tire bikes had revitalized a market that was not doing particularly well up to that point. The bicycle manufacturers in the US hoped that cycling would catch on with American teens and adults - that more modern bicycle designs inspired by the light roadsters of Britain in particular could revitalized adult cycling the way the balloon tire cruisers had revitalized the youth market. British bicycles had also been coming into the United States, particularly the Hercules, Phillips, and later the Raleigh bikes.

There certainly was some market for the bikes, but it proved to be disappointing compared to the sort of boom that the balloon tired cruisers had done for the American youth market. The real "boom" in adult cycling in the US would have to wait until the late 1960s and early 1970s. That boom provided quite a boost in the sector of adult riders who sought serious sporting, touring, and commuting bicycles.

The early light roadsters from the US makers we see today are leftovers from a hope the manufacturers had that they could expand the bicycle market into older teens and adults who wanted serious commuting or sporting goods. In that sense, they're the "odd men out" - too late for the cycling boom of the late 19th century, but too early for the boom of the 1960s-70s.
 
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