What is this?

[dirtman]

I got this and a pile of parts from a cleanout a while back, some of the parts were marked 'Firestone', some were marked Roadmaster, and some were labeled Western Flyer.
The fenders, which I haven't unpacked yet are round topped with flat braces.
The frame and fenders are all poorly repainted, the old guy that had it said his kid had painted it back in the 70's and that it was a much darker red before. The wheels are apart, the hubs are both New Departure, the spokes are 14g with long nipples. The rims are painted to match the bike and are what I'm told is called 'waterfall' style drop center rims.
The saddle is a beehive spring with only the horsehair padding left. There is no handlebars, stem, or chain guard.
The crankset has dog leg arms with a swirl type sprocket pattern for 1" chain.

I do not have the right BB cups for this, the BB cups are larger than most newer cups, a common Wald style cup falls right in. The original cups are there but blown through and cracked.
The headset is in similar shape but it came with a bag of misc headset parts.
I'm told the bike has been apart for over 35 years. It came with two sets of tires, one set marked 'Davis' tire and the other "Western Flyer". Both pair of tires are like new and apparently were wrapped up and saved many years ago. There are a set of well used Davis tires as well, which I'm guessing must of come off the bike at some point.

 

[Archie Sturmer]

Looks like an early CWC double bar roadster, with a high lower bar (no room for tank).

 

[barneyguey]

This is a Roadmaster with a dealer badge. I need the correct fork though. It looks a lot like yours. I was told it's a 1937. Barry

 

[dirtman]

Here's one of the boxes of parts dumped out, the chain wheel looks pretty worn, but there's a brand new one in the box. There's several types of truss brackets, and two pair of trusses, but I'm not sure if they're for this bike or one of the Columbia bikes. One Columbia is new enough to have 1/2" chain, its either a Columbia or maybe a Highway Patrol model. (I found both badges).
There's both a Western Flyer badge and a Roadmaster badge that would fit this frame.
The Roadmaster badge looks new, the WF badge is pretty faded but not damaged in anyway.
There's two sets of brand new BB cups, but neigther fit correctly. The one's with the crank had what appears to be shims cut from an aluminum can. The BB is larger than modern American bottom brackets by about 1/16". The two loose cups in the pic were in a DP Harris envelope.
The saddle pictured is recovered but not correct for this bike, its likely from the older Columbia. There's a beehive spring Persons saddle with rotted leather in another box. There are four sets of fenders, one set looks like your blue rear fender, another is the same in red but with a different kickstand bracket, both are new old stock, and there's two sets of peaked fenders also new, wrapped up in brown and black wax paper with "Firestone" emblems all over the paper.
There are new axle adjusting screws as well.
The two hubs appear to be new old stock, as are the spokes, which are in old Torrington boxes. The rims are painted like the frame but minus the pinstripe.

I actually got this stuff a while ago, I half forgot I had it till I saw the frame hanging on the wall downstairs one day.
(There's also two minty clean or maybe new old stock JC Higgins Finned hubs in the one box, so I'm not sure what all they were working on). There's also a box of hardware that's all covered in green paint, as in house paint, so maybe he had a parts bike at some point that I didn't get.

I had a Packard and a Roadmaster years ago as a kid that I used to deliver papers on, both were rough old bikes that were barely maintained. This reminds me most of the Packard, which I was told was from the mid to late 30's, it had a similar twin bar frame like this but in green.

How or what differentiates this frame from the Colson/Packard frame? I was looking at a few pics and really don't see the difference other than maybe a slight difference in the rear seat stays?

 

[Archie Sturmer]

About Packards and Colsons, Packard was a common bike label, (perhaps even named after a car); and Colson did make some. I forget if CWC was another(?).
The rear end of the Colson frames are different — the rear triangle plates on Colsons are most distinctive, and the Colson chain tensioner screws were narrower with finer threads. The rear tubes are smaller on Colsons. Also, where the two rear forks attach to the crank hanger, Colson tubes are more tightly spaced than most bikes.
The front forks look similar, but most Colsons have closed ends for the axle.
Maybe the previous owner of the boxes had an old CWC-built Western Flyer, (like both the sprockets might indicate), and planned to make it into a CWC Road Master; or just random leftover parts(?).
Some people may prefer the manufacturer’s in-house brand label; while others, prefer the original (whatever it was).
Maybe measure the bottom bracket inside diameter in millimeters with digital calipers. A member once indicated that CWC changed their BB design in their first year or so of production.

 

[dirtman]

Its origins are hard to find, the guy who sold it to me said it was his bike new, he was pretty old then, it was his son who took it upon himself to tear the bike apart and repaint it, it was apparently just a rattle can rebuild with lots of rusty bits just painted silver and worn parts just painted over.
The cranks are painted silver, as is the original sprocket, the saddle clamp was the same way, but when I stripped off the silver found a layer of bright green paint, then rust under that.
The bb cups are painted silver, and have green paint on them, but neither are reusable. The BB and sprocket have a ton of wear. The headset isn't much better but there's a couple of spares that fit.
The new chainring is bright chrome, the cranks are not, they look more like nickle plating than chrome with lots of bare metal at the bends.
There is no chainguard, and they apparently had a cheap chrome universal one clamped on it at some point. The paint on the bike comes off easy, it looks like bare metal underneath as if it were sandblasted down to bare steel before painting. The paint is much brighter in person than the pics show, its a red that likely never existed back then. The original color was a really dark red or cranberry color. There's a few chips of original paint showing inside the BB and on the steer tube. I have no idea what sort of decals or lettering it would have had.
The old guy seemed to remember he got it when he was 15, and he said he was born in 1924. That would make it a 1939 or so model.

I found this ad online that looks pretty close:
It also appears that they sold these without chainguards?



I found this online, it most closely matches what I'm seeing as the original color:
This one also has the same style stem as what I found in the box, but its top tubes appear farther apart.

 

[Archie Sturmer]

The bicycle date may be estimated based on the serial number, and reference to the “Cleveland Welding S/N Project” thread, which was pinned to the top of the “Classic” bicycles (1933-1965) forum.

Also, back to the comparison and parts, (looking at your seat posts and shims), earlier Colson frames accommodated smaller 3/4” seat posts (odd size); when CWC may have used 5/8” and many/most other bikes 13/16”.

 

[dirtman]

The seat tube opening is 13/16", the BB measures 51.95mm. A brand new Wald cup slips in pretty loosely, they had a full wrap of aluminum can around the BB cups and they are still loose. The BB shell is round within a few tenths of an inch.
The original cups look to be cast or forged not stamped steel. One is worn nearly through and broken out the back, the other one is cracked all around with a deep ball groove worn into the cup. They also don't have a surface lip, the rest on an inner lip or at the point where the machined surface ends inside the BB.

The steer tube is 7/8"

There was a heavy rounded lip shim in the seat tube stepping the seat post down to 5/8". All the seat posts that came with it are 3/4". The one Columbia has a 5/8" seat post though with no shim.

The only numbers are a series of dots on the BB shell that spell out 101. I see no other numbers.
The drop outs are blank and I see nothing on any of the tubes or around the head tube.

The holes for the headbadge match those on the WF and the Roadmaster Headbadge but it had a Schwinn headbadge on it when I found it.

What years used the waterfall style drop center rims?

There is also an Elgin badge in the box but it doesn't fit the screw holes in the frame.

Maybe none of these parts belong together and its all just a box of spare parts that someone turned into a bike?

 

[Archie Sturmer]

CWC started in late 1935; I am less familiar with those early models; I was thinking about having read that the seat post design also being changed fairly early in CWC production; have not looked at my own problem-frame in a while. Never thought to even measure its bottom bracket(!).

Just eyeballing the posts, the middle one looks Colson, as does the longer shim, perhaps for later Colson (loop frame) models.

So maybe in the early years CWC used different dimensions than in the later years?

 

[dirtman]

All three seat posts in the pic are 3/4", all of the shims are to step 13/16" down to 5/8".
There is one short 5/8" angle seat post in the one box, but its super short and has a long shim stuck on it. Its maybe 4" long. (There's 8 or 9 boxes in all with the parts from at least three bikes. The older Columbia parts are easy to identify because of the black paint on everything. There is a loose pair of forks with closed dropouts, and another pair of unknown forks that are similar to those on the WF but with a raised rib down each side. The headset with these forks is in a lot better shape than the one on the red bike but the crown race is a different size.
Was Colson the only brand to use a closed end fork?






I cleaned up the chain in a bucket of gas, it looks far better all cleaned up than I thought it would, especially after looking at the sprockets. Its not off the older Columbia because that bike still has its chain on it. The wheels for the Columbia are regular Endrick style not drop center and those use a Bendix hub.