A Guide to Schwinn 3 Speeds

Introduction

Note - July 2024

I have consolidated the Short Field Guide to Schwinn three speed bikes HERE.

Cold Weather Hits

This is the first truly cold weekend here this winter. The temperature was in the 30's all day, with a bit of a wind chill on top of that. That's not enough to stop me from riding though. The roads have not gotten any snow or salt, so it's perfectly fine to ride, just a bit cold. I have been giving the 1941 Schwinn New World road time, and it's quite enjoyable.

This brown Brooks B66 saddle looks great with the dark red paint. The saddle has just a hint of red in the sunlight, which is perfect with this bike.

 One thing I do suggest: have at least one bike with relatively low gearing in your garage. This New World is 46 teeth in front and 22 in back, which is fairly low. On a windy day when you're wearing a ski coat and winter clothes, you'll want the lower gearing. The extra wind resistance is a pain, but the lower gearing makes up for it.

1941 Schwinn New World On the Road

It was grey and chilly today, but not as windy as yesterday. I took the recently re-built 1941 Schwinn three speed for a ride, and it performed nicely. It's a pleasant riding bicycle.

 There's plenty of debris and leaves on the ground this time of year. You have to have good tires and tubes to roll over all the tree-related junk in the road.

The bike has a worn sort of look that befits its age. The paint is original and relatively clean, though thin in a few spots. The decals are faded, but mostly intact.

The "hat in the ring" is a great touch. The emblem goes back to the 94th Aero Squadron and fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker in World War I. The emblem was associated with American-built speed and capability after Rickenbacker shot down 26 German planes in the First World War.

1941 Schwinn New World

The final project this year is the revival of a 1941 Schwinn New World. This is a dark red colored, standard sized men's bike that was stripped of its parts and left only a "core".

The bike still had its frame, part of its headset, its fork, two of the three fender braces, the fenders, and the fixed bottom bracket cup. Pretty much everything else was missing.

The challenge here was to take a bicycle core and build a full, high-quality bike of it that would also be very faithful to the 1940s era of New World bikes.

The result is a very nice bicycle.

 I needed to build a three piece crank set. I located some 1940s era Schwinn bottom bracket parts. This is a cottered crank set with the familiar clover leaf sprocket.

At first, it seems like it might be the usual one-piece clover set up. Instead, it's a very nice, three-piece set with Schwinn script on the crank arms.

 Interestingly, Schwinn apparently copied English Hercules or Phillips parts when it designed its cottered bottom brackets of the 1930s-40s. I had a bunch of Birmingham Hercules parts in my boxes and found that the adjustable cup and lock ring fit perfectly. Hercules cotter pins needed only minor filing to fit. The spindle is a Phillips and fits nicely, though probably is a shade longer than the original Schwinn spindle would have been. It is very close and works well though.

 I was lucky enough to find one of those generic, McCauley Metal chainguards from the early 1940s, and it even came in the correct color. These chainguards appear to have been made for a variety of bicycles and had adjustable mounting hardware. I had a bag of the hardware unused, so decided to use the clean hardware on this bike. The chainguard turned out to be a nice match.

 The grips are Schwinn script type, but are reproductions. They're pliable and comfortable. The bell is appears to be an elevator bell made into a bike bell. This came from Amazon and is new.


The resulting bike is quite nice. The red is a little faded in spots, but it seems to have fared pretty well. 

Overall, the presentation is pretty good. I opted for white walls because they look nice with the red. A brown Brooks B66 saddle is comfortable and finishes the bike.  It has a correct Sturmey Archer shifter.



The pedals are Torrington #10 and the bike rides really nicely. It's nice taking a bare bike core and building it into a high-quality, period piece, especially one this old.

A Difficult Question

As many people involved with vintage bikes know, complete bicycles often are worth less than their parts sold separately. While this is not true of all vintage bikes, it is true of many.

So that leads to a hard question: is there a point at which a bicycle's history is too great to allow its owner to part it out, even if the parts are quite valuable?

I think the answer is, "yes". It is hard to determine at what point a bicycle becomes too historically significant to part out, but there certainly must be a point when that is true.

A case in point: a 100 year old bicycle was recently parted out and sold in pieces on an internet bicycle website. While the bicycle was not 100% that age, much of it was. I certainly do think a mostly complete, 100 year old bicycle, is too significant to part out for money.

But let's make this harder, what about a 50 years old Raleigh-built Phillips? The bike certainly is not all that valuable probably, but then 50 years is a long time for a complete bike. What about a 40 year old 10 speed Peugeot UO-8? Such a bike certainly is nothing special, but then it is old and complete. These are the hard questions because it is not easy to draw a line on semi-recent, common bicycles.

What about ladies' bikes? They generally aren't worth as much, and some have valuable parts. Should they be parted out? Is there a different line drawn for a men's bike than there is for a ladies' bike?

Perhaps we have become too cavalier in parting-out complete bicycles, even mundane, English three speeds.

I don't have all the answers to these questions, but I like think about this once in awhile. I will admit my bias is for keeping bikes together overall. I do change parts and make "period" upgrades, but I keep the original parts on hand to reset the bike to original, whenever I need to do that.

I do recognize that there is a need for a parts market to complete old bike projects, but perhaps we are handling certain pieces of manufacturing history when we handle old bikes. I think we should always be respectful of that fact, at least to some degree.

Changing Weather

Today really was two different days, in terms of the weather. Most of the day was sunny and warm, with high temperatures in the low 70s. That is really warm for this time of year.

In the late afternoon, a powerful cold front moved through, causing temperatures to fall into the 40s. We lost about 30 degrees of warmth in about three hours. I suppose this means the colder weather is really starting...

Before the temperature dropped, I took out this 1958 Raleigh Sports 4 Speed. It's really a great riding bike.

The Downside of Online Bicycle Communities

I thought I would add a few comments on the darker side of online bicycle fora and communities.

 Sometimes I see the negative version of "show and tell": a thread or topic on a bulletin board where people post links and pictures of bicycles they wish to insult, topics where people post a link to eBay or Craigslist, showing a bike with an amateur restoration or the like, then make brutal comments about the seller/restorer and the work done.

While some sellers are unreasonable or overstate the quality of their work, I don't see a need to purposefully post a link to a bike, then engage in raw insults. It speaks negatively of the poster and the forum allowing the talk. The work may be sloppy, and saying, "I think the job is sloppy" is perfectly fine. But at some point the negativity passes into raw insults. Honesty and basic respect are not mutually exclusive.

 It's probably better to say nothing than to "call someone out" and insult their work or go after the restorer personally.

This post is not related to any particular events in the work I have done, but it's a general trend I see on bike websites, and it does not reflect well on the segments of the community who participate in it.

Schwinn New Worlds: Rebuilding 1940s Cottered Crank Sets

I devoted part of this long weekend to Schwinn New World bicycles. I rode my 1947 New World to the local park on Friday and Saturday. The weather was warm Friday, but much cooler and more like November on Saturday.

Today I devoted to working on a 1940-41 New World. This bicycle came as a project to me as a core, stripped of most of its parts. It is unclear how this happened, but it is something I see with fair regularity. American road bikes from the early years often share some parts in common with balloon tire bikes. People sometimes strip the parts from the road bikes to add to the more valuable balloon tire bikes. We don't see this as often with English bicycles,  because the parts usually do not transfer from English bicycles to balloon tire cruisers.

In any event, the first tasks were to re-build the headset and to build a three piece bottom bracket for this project. The headset was not difficult to assemble from original and a few later (1950s-era) parts.

The bottom bracket was a harder nut to crack. Schwinn actually made its own three-piece bottom brackets in the 1940s. I got out the calipers and did some testing on a 1948 Schwinn Continental I have that is also a three piece crank bicycle.

The calipers revealed that Schwinn seems to have copied Birmingham Hercules parts from England. It turns out that 1940s Schwinn cranks, spindles, cups, and lock rings are all very close in measurement to Birmingham Hercules parts.

I bought 1940s Schwinn cranks and supplied my own Hercules adjustable cup, lock ring, and cotter pins. The pins required some filing, but not much.

I used .250 ball bearings (11 per side), the same as a Birmingham Hercules or a Nottingham Raleigh. The spindle came from an old Phillips bicycle. The fixed cup is the original Schwinn part, which was never removed from this bike.

Hopefully this mixed parts bottom bracket set up will work well. It fits together snugly and runs smoothly on the bike stand at least. The use of Schwinn cranks and a Schwinn chainring look good on this bicycle, while the use of quality English internal parts should allow it to run smoothly.

Using Aluminum 590mm (English 26 x 1 3/8) Rims on a Schwinn

I recently built a Schwinn New World bicycle for my wife. The bicycle at hand was a 1947 Schwinn New World that came as part of a "his and hers" New World set. I've been riding the men's bicycle for several years and the time came to build the women's bike for my wife.

Being less wedded to historical accuracy than me, she opted to have aluminum rims. Schwinn's stock size in that era was 597 mm (Schwinn 26 x 1 3/8, or 26 x 1 1/4 in England). This proprietary size widely has heavy, steel rims of either a Westrick  (S5) or an Endrick  (S6) pattern. The question then was, "how do I get aluminum rims on a Schwinn New World?".


I thought of what one would do with an English three speed: buy Sun CR-18 aluminum rims. Perhaps this could work...






I bought the rims and laced them to the hubs. Conveniently, the rims had roughly the same effective rim diameter as the Schwinn S5 Westrick (owning to the Westrick having a "bump" in the center that shortens the spokes a bit. The stock 11 1/4 inch spokes in front and 10 3/4 spokes in back worked fine: 36, cross 3 pattern.

The somewhat smaller diameter led to a slightly longer brake reach needed. I addressed that with a set of Weinmann #810 brakes from the 1960s, off a Schwinn Traveler. These long-reach brakes worked fine.

The result is this: you can use Sun CR-18 rims on a Schwinn lightweight, provided you have the longer-reach brakes like the Weinmann 810 calipers. This opens up a variety of new and improved tires over the stock Schwinn size. I opted for "all around" type Kenda tires on my wife's bike.

These wheels are quite light for this bike. In fact, the front wheel in full weighed less than the stock S5 rim weighed alone. Braking is also improved.

Fall Bike Ride: Schwinn New World

It was another fine, dry day here in Virginia. The afternoon temperature got into the 60's, and we expect the same tomorrow. The leaves really are turning now, and given that it is already November, it's perhaps a little late this year.

That's not so bad though. It means we've had a dry, warm fall, and that's exactly the best weather for riding.

The 1947 Schwinn New World is an excellent bicycle with its three speed hub, and upgraded stainless steel Schwinn rims.








The clocks change to standard time tonight, which means the sun goes down at an earlier hour. I don't care for the change, but there's still enough daylight to take an afternoon ride on the weekends.

Indian Summer: Schwinn Lightweights on the Road

We reached around 80 degrees in the afternoon each of the past two days. That meant good weather for riding. My choices for this weekend were the 1940s Schwinn Continental and New World bicycles. They both have a distinctive character on the road, and both are fun riders.

1947 Ladies' Schwinn New World

I also finished up the companion bicycle my men's New World. This ladies' bicycle came with the men's model as a pair. I re-built this bicycle as a rider for my wife, using a mixture of modern and original parts. My wife especially wanted aluminum rims, improved brakes, and aluminum brake handles. I was able to get all of those working, and the result is a nice, practical bicycle. It is a three speed, and it runs pretty well.

 

Schwinn New World - Fall Ride

If you have daylight, even if only for a few minutes, take the chance to get outdoors. The weather is still decent, but it may not be for too much longer. The days are also getting shorter.

I had a few minutes of daylight after getting back from an appointment this evening, and I took that chance to go for a ride on this 1947-48 Schwinn New World. It's a fun bike, even if my Schwinn Continental has higher performance. The New World has a nice, balanced ride and enough "go" to move with traffic. It is a little more relaxed in riding position and makes a great all around bicycle.