NEW PROJECT 1938 PACKARD ANY INFO???

Advertise with us
Shop deals on ebay
Bike Wall
Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum

Help Support Rat Rod Bikes Bicycle Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
murraymadman

murraymadman

Joined
Oct 5, 2008
Messages
796
Reaction score
10
Location
north vernon, indiana
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
here is my latest project. i bought this for $15 dollars this evening......just kiddin'! :D this belongs to an 84year old gentleman and was his childhood bike. he wants me to restore it right down to the spokes!!! he dropped it off this evening, and after my heart rate returned to normal we talked about what all he wanted done. he said she is a 1938 model. it is a horn tank bike. anybody that can shed some light on this bike would be great. i was figuring on a schwinn built packard when i talked to him on the phone, pleasant surprise! he is going to give it to his son after i am done with it. wonder if he will adopt me! :D i really hate to paint this and restore it to be honest, but it is what the feller wants. it still has davis imperial tires from western auto! also has wooden blocks in the pedals. it will be put back as original as possible. i will document it as i go.
104_4726.jpg
104_4727.jpg
104_4732.jpg
 
thanks for the pics. wonder what headlight this is supposed to have and chainguard. i am putting a rear stand back on it for him. he said he may the light and some other parts for it also a pic of him on it at the age of fifteen!!! do you guys think the rear carrier is correct for the bike?
 
Drooooolll Drooolll...........She is gorgoues.......The bars are amazing.......Looks very straight......I wish you the very best on the restore and PLEASE keep us posted.......LOVE IT...... :mrgreen:
 
It's a fairly early balloon Colson, maybe a '36 or '37. The sweetheart sprocket is correct, earlier Colson bikes had them. Rack, not sure about.
 
so it is a colson made bike w/a packard badge? this is where i get lost alot of times on the really old ones. :? who was packard?
 
Packard Motor Car Co. owned Colson in some way so I'm guessing it was some reference to that. I don't know for sure, might have been another hardware store marque and was just a coincidence. Either way, that's a great badge for that bike. Colson is my personal favorite bike brand.
 
The bicycle was made by Colson. Colson sold and distributed bikes with many different badges and the Packard badge turns up on their bikes with some frequency. Other manufacturers also sold bikes labeled as Packard (CWC and Schwinn are two) In this case there is no real physical or corporate relationship between the bike and the automobile manufacturer it was just a popular marketing ploy to associate the bikes with automobiles (Sting Ray)

Colson produced frames with parallel curved top tubes (Rainbow configuration) before 1938 but did not introduce the “Snap-Tank” until that year. The earlier frames are different in several areas and the Snap-Tank will not fit them.

Colson also introduced the three-paisley chain ring, the eye-brow chain guard and the steel droop-tail rack in 1938. the fact that this bike has the earlier style Colson sweetheart sprocket, bent instead of curved truss rods and the accessory style rack points to the bike as being early 1938 production or being a lower end model or both. As such it may not have originally come with a chain guard. The other bicycles pictured so far are a basic grey bike with a later paint scheme and truss rods and a crust colored 1938 Colson Imperial with all the deluxe chrome and aluminum fittings that make the deluxe version deluxe.

Colson produced this bike with small variations and at various price levels until WW2 but several things point to your bike being an early 1938 model which jibes with the original owner’s memory. Colson serial numbers are generally decipherable if you would like to post it or PM me with it,

As far as restoration, the bike probably originally had a steel Delta front-loader torpedo light on the fender, a Colson braced drop stand and rubber pedal blocks (the wood ones were replacements available during WW2.) Otherwise the bike looks quite complete and correct
 
thanks rms37! i will locate the serial number and post it. he said he thinks he has the drop stand and will look for it as well as the headlight. so this takes the long torpedo light, right?
 
The original finish on a prewar bike should be the equivalent of a similar period automobile. The finish should have a standard high gloss nature but not the overly glassy look achieved with some modern paint systems and clearcoats.

Here is the scoop on Colson Serial Numbers.

A friend of mine specializes in prewar Colsons and has a reasonably large collection of them. We logged the serial numbers of his bikes and the few I have. Comparing the serial numbers to the models, we noted patterns that generally worked to tie the individual bikes to the year they were produced.

Beginning with the 1937 models the serial numbers usually consist of two lines of information. One is a letter followed by a number and the other is four or five numbers.

The conclusion we drew from our sampling is that the number in the two character line represents the last digit of the year the bike was produced. The letter may represent the month of that year but our sampling to date is not large enough to confirm this.

The caution is that the sampling to date is large enough to show a pattern but not large enough to confirm the pattern and some Colsons are not stamped in a manner that fits this defined pattern and decoding.

On the bright side, the bike you are working on does fit the pattern, so, first of all I would guess that the 1 in the second line may be an “I “. The 8 in that line following our decoding would represent production during 1938. The four numbers above are likely a sequential code relative to the two character base code.

1937 codes appear to be reversed, with the two digit code above the four/five digit one. From 1938 most of the bikes have the larger code placed above the shorter one.

Typical codes by year would be:

F7 over 12345 equals 1937,
12345 over F8 equals 1938,
12345 over F9 equals 1939,
12345 over F0 equals 1940,
12345 over F1 equals 1941,
and 12345 over F2 equals 1942

The bikes we identified as pre 1937 have one line codes as opposed to two line codes and several of the 1934 and 1935 models have the last digit of the assumed year of production located at the front of the serial number.

Examples would be: 4 B1004 would signify 1934 and 5H2188 would signify 1935. The 1936 bikes we recorded did not follow either the earlier or later patterns.

No postwar Colsons were included in the sampling so I can’t speak to whether or not the prewar pattern holds true for postwar bikes.

I’ll end this with a reiteration of the caution that the numbers we were working with are a small sampling of Colson production. Anomalies and alternative interpretations of the Colson serial number system may surface as additional numbers are added to the model.
 
Colsons are some of the best bikes ever built I think. This is really a classic, I will be following this real closely... can't wait to see it done! :D
 

Latest posts

Back
Top