White sidewalls or black walls?

[Rivnut]

As I look at the bikes that have pictures posted then look at the Schwinn catalog scan of the same bike, I see bikes in the catalog with white sidewall tires but pictures of the same model for a given year with black wall tires. Or vice versa. The catalog shows black wall tires and the pictured bike has white sidewalls. Is there any unstated rule that the tires on a given bike be the same as they had when the bike was originally assembled? I see quite a few Typhoons with white sidewalls and Tigers with black walls which for 1959 (and for some unknown reason, I have a few) that are opposite of what they should have. Do I leave everything as is or do I start swapping tires and wheels?
Thanks,
Ed

 

[GTs58]

I would say it's all due to the owners personal preference. Some bikes look better with blackwall tires and some look like crap with them. I'd never put a set of blackwalls on my Corvettes but I really like the blackwalls on the Varsity and other lightweights. Schwinnbikebobb puts whitewalls on "all" his bikes in case you haven't noticed. When you find an old bike in the barn that hasn't been used for decades most of them will have a non standard brand and it's usually a blackwall. That's due to the vast variety of manufactures and retailers decades ago and many didn't carry white wall tires plus they cost more if you they did have them. Retailers like Sears and Wards or even BFG didn't always have whitewalls available.

Look at the tires that were on my 55 Corvette. POS and the smallest middleweight tire I've ever seen. Early 70's? Kenda with the Schwinn name on them. And the tubes were slightly bigger than a lightweight tube! They probably cost half of what a WW Westwind cost back in the day.

 

[bloo]

Schwinn put their name on those S7 Kendas?! Wow.

 

[GTs58]

Schwinn put their name on those S7 Kendas?! Wow.

Yes they had their name on them. I have a 1969 Deluxe Twinn (S7) that had a set that was a little later issue of the Kendas with a slightly different tread, and they had the white oval with Schwinn on them.

 

[coasterbrakejunkie1969]

Some of the Schwinn bikes were advertised to come with WW tires I believe the Corvette mentioned by GT is one of them. As far as a Typhoon I thought the De Luxe came with WW tires as well. You could have a dealer put them on any bike you wanted before it left the showroom. Like GT said your preference. I dress up almost all my bikes with WW's I really love the classic look of them. Having used the new larger S-7 tires on my bikes I have a real hard time leaving any skinny aftermarket tires on my bikes.

 

[PCHiggin]

I would say it's all due to the owners personal preference. Some bikes look better with blackwall tires and some look like crap with them. I'd never put a set of blackwalls on my Corvettes but I really like the blackwalls on the Varsity and other lightweights. Schwinnbikebobb puts whitewalls on "all" his bikes in case you haven't noticed. When you find an old bike in the barn that hasn't been used for decades most of them will have a non standard brand and it's usually a blackwall. That's due to the vast variety of manufactures and retailers decades ago and many didn't carry white wall tires plus they cost more if you they did have them. Retailers like Sears and Wards or even BFG didn't always have whitewalls available.

Look at the tires that were on my 55 Corvette. POS and the smallest middleweight tire I've ever seen. Early 70's? Kenda with the Schwinn name on them. And the tubes were slightly bigger than a lightweight tube! They probably cost half of what a WW Westwind cost back in the day.

View attachment 1564782

I had a black 5 speed Corvette with black walls, I thought it looked tuff. Sold it on years ago

 

[PCHiggin]

As already stated, It’s personal preference. No rules. I’d think the only time it might otherwise matter would be in a show where the judges have absolute proof that a certain bike was sold with one or the other. I like black walls on everything with wheels. Never cared for red lines or white letters but I do like red Grand Tycoons on a few color bikes. I guess some whitewalls looked ok on old land barges like my ‘59 Star Chief or 68’Wildcat convert way back when, I’d swap ‘em out today for black and wires

 

[schwinnman67]

Schwinn did make some bikes with white walls standard (my 63 KSHD American came with them per the catalog),
while others had black walls standard (my 62 Typhoon had black walls standard per the catalog).

 

[PCHiggin]

Always liked the basic m/w schwinns with black walls and white or cream rims. My wife has a debbie with white westwinds, we bought it that way. she wont let me swap them
for black

 

[rollfaster]

I typically use whitewalls on Corvettes, Jaguar, Tigers etc and use Blackwalls on lower end models like Speedster, Typhoon and so on. I am currently running Blackwalls on my 61 Corvette, mainly because I haven’t been able to get my hands on any. I do a lot of trading with local guys so I just use what I can. At least I’ve been lucky enough to get them in very good ridable condition or new.