Both Westfield and H.P. Snyder produced very similar frames that are often confused with each other. It is obvious from the similarities that one company cribbed the basic design from the other. In my opinion, Snyder copied the Westfield Airider design and made enough changes due both to construction techniques proprietary to each company and pure design changes to keep them out of legal hot water.
This frame is a rare variation of H. P. Snyder’s version, referred to by them as the Tribar frame in reference to the three-tube juncture in front of the seat tube. Both Westfield and Snyder produced a range of frames from the basic architecture of their designs and this version with the addition of the lower top tube is one I have never seen before. (One of the rarest versions of the Westfield Airider frame is one with a truss-arch in the frame where the tank would usually hang.)
Without the additional tube, this frame would be the same as the standard Tribar frame and would use the Snyder “Master” hanging toolbox tank. The Snyder tank looks very much like the Westfield/Columbia/Elgin Blackhawk tank except it has a square nose as opposed to the rounded nose of the Westfield produced tank.
The likely reason variations were produced with extra tubes and no tank was to offer a less expensive variation to jobbers and distributors to round out their offerings. Whatever the reason these seem to be the rarest versions of these bikes and I have only seen one of each (This one for Snyder and one truss framed Airider on eBay several years ago)
Regarding dating the bike, for a number of reasons Snyder serial codes remain unbroken at this time. Several patterns were followed over the prewar years and at the time this bike was produced, it appears that many of the Snyder serial numbers followed a progressive alphanumeric pattern that should yield a serial number beginning with a “C” a “D” or an “E” for the bike. Thrown into the mix are a number of bikes with serial numbers beginning with an “X” and a few others I have recorded that fall outside of those ranges.
Keeping with the “X” bikes, I have recorded X17907, X30093, and now this bike X43035. X30093 is a Tribar Snyder frame identical to this your frame but without the additional lower top tube. It is unbadged but has the Rollfast style darts, again like your frame. The lowest “X” number, X17907 throws a monkey wrench in the flow, as it is another rare variant. It is a very original bike and was badged and sold as an early Hawthorne Sport model, essentially a pre-37 bike with what has come to be known as the “Zep” frame. It has the early version of the locking collet seat binder, which should date production of the bike to very late 1935 or early 1936. Interestingly it has the Tribar seat juncture coupled with a straight down tube and the full crescent fenders again associated with 1936. I believe X17907 is a rare, pre-catalog Sport and probably was produced in late 1935. The presence of the standard bolt clamp on the two later “X” serialed Tribar frames leads me to believe that the collet binder was phased into production rather than tied to a specific date change-over.
Based on the above I would speculate that your bike and these other recorded “X” bikes are probably from very late 1935.
One other thing that may be relevant to this discussion is that the earliest “Zep” type frames have top tubes located too close together to fit the slightly later, standard “Zep banana tank. I would imagine this would also be the case with this frame.
Nothing in the bike world gets me more excited than the appearance of a bike that is an as of yet undiscovered variation of a relatively standard model, so this bike has made my day!
Phil Marshall
Shoreline (Seattle) Washington
