why is everything a schwinn?

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Yup, everything's a Schwinn and one of the things that annoys me about FleaBay is "Fits Schwinn" no matter what it is that's up for auction.

When I'm out on my Cycle Truck, I almost never hear "Nice Schwinn" ... I usually get "What is that thing? Did you make it?

Can't wait to finish the H.P. Snyder, Black Beauty ... I suppose that's when I'll hear "Nice Schwinn!"
 
nowadays it's probably hard to grasp for anyone under the age of 40 (or 50? :mrgreen: ), but schwinn really was known for quality and built a long lasting reputation because of it. since before ww2 there have always been bike shop quality bikes (schwinn being the most popular for decades) and dime store quality bikes. take a couple hypothetical 'vintage' examples we see on craigslist nearly every day.....

let's say a 50's-60's schwinn (corvette, american, racer, whatever- nothing fancy) versus a competing bike from sears, pennys, western auto, huffy, murray, practically anything from a catalog or non lbs. grab the handlebars and just give the bike a good 'ol shake- watch the dime store frame jiggle and wiggle all the way back to the rear wheel. the schwinn? solid. let's take the bike apart and compare the components- the dime store bikes probably have headsets and bottom brackets long since ready for the trash can. the schwinn? in my experience almost always reusable- even down to the bearing retainers. examine the frame construction- the thicker walled headtube of the schwinn means that even if you need or want to replace the headset you can use a quality bmx size unit instead of hunting for the cheap catalog oem quality wald. how 'bout the dropouts? what's longer lasting and better riding, certainly not the ubiquitous crimped and tacked dime store construction.....

the longer i'm in the hobby the more impressed i become with what schwinn did. sure there are other now defunct quality bike shop brands. some are more rare, some more innovative, a very few equal or perhaps even better in construction, but schwinn absolutely dominated for nearly fifty years- no small feat, and i don't believe for a minute this was achieved solely by their aggressive advertising. strip away the paint and the geegaws and it's easy to see that schwinns were just plain better bikes than nearly all of the competition.

that they are well remembered is well deserved :)
 
Haters...the world is full of them. :mrgreen: It's seems funny to me that some people that like other brands knock Schwinn's but I never hear Schwinn guys saying anything negative about CWC or J.C. Higgins bikes. I wonder why? :p Haters, get a life!!

For me, it's brand loyalty. My childhood bikes were Schwinns. I liked them then, I still like them.
I also grew up in the 50's watching Captain Kangaroo, so we all know...
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I will usually get "Nice bike". I have nothing against Schwinn bikes. One of my favorite rides is my '55 Spitfire, my wife rides a custom '68 Breeze, one daughter is on an original '68 Breeze, and my youngest daughter rides a '69 Hollywood. But I have never been one of those guys that likes to be like all the other sheeple, that is why you will find me on my '34 Colson Rat more often than my clean original Schwinn.

It also helps that I hang with other bike lovers who know the difference between a Schwinn and a Monark and a Colson and an Iver Johnson.
 
I see tons of Schwinn frames at swap meets, they were strong. but I also see a lot of cool bikes that weren't made by Schwinn in excellent condition after 50 years too. And I've seen a lot of junk Shwinns too. All the bikes back in the old days were great, I like 'em all. What company sold the most bikes back in the 1960's? Were Schwinns a better value becuase they cost alot more? How much of a schwinn was actually made by schwinn? I know the Sturmey Archer hubs and Bendix hubs were brought in.

Dorian
 
its not that we hate schwinn. its more about the people that make it sound like they are the only company and dont look around for other options. i wouldn't mind having a tornado or a typhoon with the double straight bar, then again you don't see those very often and i think thats why i like them. i also like some prewar autocycle with the dx frame but then again you dont see those very often either. like those cycle trucks too. very often people that think that everything is a schwinn are from the late 60's on up and everytime they see a canti frame must be a schwinn. if you show them a prewar excelsior from 1917 they will probably think it was bought at walmart.
 
As far as strong frames, I will disagree.

The only bike frame I cracked as a kid was a 1967 Schwinn fastback with a BMX Tange fork. It cracked completely through on the down tube about an inch from the head tube. I rode a 1960's Sears (Murray) and a mid 70's Ross both with stock forks and used them as BMX bikes. The Ross really took abuse but the Schwinn didn't last long.

I did deliver news papers on a Schwinn Stingray with 10 speed Ross forks to clear the front tire for the bag hanging off the handlebars. That held up but I wasn't jumping ramps with it.
 
Okay...I'll pick a fight. :mrgreen:

In my experience...the quality of the Schwinn bikes, especially the 60s and newer models is quite a bit nicer than the other brands. Their welds, paint quality and chrome are really hard to beat.

Not to mention that they had their own store fronts and most of us remember going to a Schwinn store at one point in our lives.
 
i was to poor, never went to one of those stores. now that i think about it i'm still to poor and probably wouldn't go in one of those store today if they existed! :mrgreen:
 
yoothgeye said:
I was just thinking tonight how even though I have a few Schwinn bikes I really don't care for them anymore than my other brand bikes, I'm not for all the hype, but yes, any bike with some age on it is easily called a Schwinn around here (most called a "Swinn") Ugh... so annoying.
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HAA, my dad says "Swinn". And every time he sees another old bike I've redone, he tells me about how he used to stick a baseball card in the frame where the spokes would hit it and sound like a motorcycle. I more enjoy the people who see one of my bikes and tell me how they had one "just like that"when they were a kid. Nevermind that I've stretched the rear 12 inches, built my own fork, added a ribcage, car parts, 6 ft of rebar, and a scythe blade for a chainguard. The bad news, it's a tetanus factory.The good news , I apparently built it factory correct. :lol:
 
laguna454 said:
As far as strong frames, I will disagree.

The only bike frame I cracked as a kid was a 1967 Schwinn fastback with a BMX Tange fork. It cracked completely through on the down tube about an inch from the head tube. I rode a 1960's Sears (Murray) and a mid 70's Ross both with stock forks and used them as BMX bikes. The Ross really took abuse but the Schwinn didn't last long.

I did deliver news papers on a Schwinn Stingray with 10 speed Ross forks to clear the front tire for the bag hanging off the handlebars. That held up but I wasn't jumping ramps with it.
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I've seen Schwinn frames crack too, but they tended to be strong. Schwinn made strong heavy frames but the rest of the stuff they put on their bikes was sourced from the outside just like every other bike make. All the bikes from that time got the job done, and scads of them are still in excellent shape after all this time. I never saw any frames fall apart in the old days, but I saw all kinds of bikes get wrecked from abuse and lack of being maintained. if schwinn sold bikes at the same price as the better selling companies they would have been about the same quality. If your bike was not a Schwinn , like most were not, and you kept it in good shape it would have been fantastic bike and would have kept you on the road. It cost a lot more for a schwinn but did all that extra money get you better tires, or seat, or rear hubs and stuff? The shcwinn frames were strong but other American bikes offered great value for a lot less money. Ratting doesn't need any special brand :lol: Why the heck did schwinn sell bikes with non standard tire sizes? that was and is a real pain!

Schwinn was good at getting us to believe, Captain Kangaroo wasnt just a spokeman, he was our trusted friend :lol: R.I.P. Bob K.
 
this thred reminds me of how in our school, the football team is so overrarted even though they arent good at all. but all the other sports think they are great and they seem to be standing around whenever we run past them. the cross country team gets very little credit for what they do. we are constantly running and working our butts off to get better, when the football team is just standing around, waiting for the next play or doing their "drills". I guess what I am trying to say is that, the football team (schwinn) has been around and even though they suck, they are still looked up to, when the other sports, especially the cc team, (other brands of bikes)are just as good or better, and they are placed aside and forgotten. Well, i dont think that pretains to anyone but there is my lifes interpretation of that same type of theory. I dont know why I shared that :? :mrgreen:
 

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