SHOW US YOUR WORKSMAN BICYCLE
- Thread starter TheFlyingDingo
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Yeah, i saw the grips, and the end-pieces, at least, have gotta go. Personally, i have no love for those kinds of saddles either, so i don't blame you. But, yeah, white walls will look rockin' on that bike.
What kind of shop do you have?
The lady I bought it from might be able to find the original seat for me, you just can't run a Lycra covered gel seat on a classic (although it is comfy).
...stay tuned, hope to be able to let the cat out of the bag soon!
...stay tuned, hope to be able to let the cat out of the bag soon!
Worksman 29er , work in progress
I was actually wondering about this second pair of bars! They're very cool.
Picked up a nice M2600 survivor today with the horizontal rear dropouts and Akisu fork:
It has a stem I had not seen before, has "LU" stamped on the two top clamps:
Nothing other than LU and insertion limit stamped on the tube.
I have a stem just like that. I put it on my latest build, thinking I might use it, but it turned out that it clamps to 1" bars, so I'm not sure what I'll be doing with it.
Mark, very cool find, curious of year, have you figured out how to date worksman frames by the serial numbers........Picked up a nice M2600 survivor today with the horizontal rear dropouts and Akisu fork:
Nope. The best one can do is the fork steer tube. This fork tube has Akisu 85 stamped on it, which is in line with the owner telling me she won it in 1985. The serial number on the frame starts with WAK 56... W, which like all other WTC frame numbers, has no year reference.
Blows my theory that the horiz. drop outs frames were older than '80s. Of interest - The rims are stamped Worksman Cycles, Made in Taiwan. I have seen this before on the back rim of my Pizza Bike. I also have a set of 26" WTC rims stamped "Made in Japan", as is the 20" front rim on the Pizza Bike.
I speculate that Worksman switched from the Tange tube/BMX type fork like in the brochure above in post 428, and ran the "Crown" fork from the mid '80s
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Worksman is weird. It seems clear that, regardless, they offered the diagonal rear-facing dropouts first, then moved to the horizontal jawns like your bike has, and then went back to the diagonal ones. Like you, I thought that the horizontal dropouts were pre-80s, but let's be real: the fork being from 85 tells us that the complete was assembled in 1985, but that doesn't mean your frame wasn't sitting in some back corner of a storage room at Worksman headquarters for 7 years....
Also, don't forget that they used at least 2 different types of lugged crown forks; the ubiquitous Akisu fork, and the Naniwa fork which is superficially similar. PS- Are you sure that all of the tubular BMX-style forks are Tange? Akisu made forks like that, too, and for cheaper....
The Tange forks seem to have been very common right around 1980-83. Both my Worksmans back then had them, and I've seen several more lately from that time frame, even on two of my Emory's. I did come across some generic tube forks on a late 90s Worksman.
In fact, those (generic late '90s) tube forks are on this build I just completed and delivered Christmas Eve for a friend's 10 year old son (hence the reflector kit and small handlebars):
I suspect the seat has come down some by now.
I suspect the seat has come down some by now.
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Mr. Sosin at Worksman tells me that they made less than 200 of these back in the '80s. Looking forward to building it in the spring to see if it works. There are no signs of it having a coaster brake so I am guessing one cannot be used. I am again searching for a rear drum brake WTC rim.
They were pretty famous here in the '80s as far as beach cruisers go. There are many garages/sheds with an old Worksman or two laying around unused. The nearby shipyards in Norfolk & Newport News used loads of them for years. Several of the frames I have come across have been shipyard bikes.
+1 he'll get that frame to you. Shoot him a PM to remind him but really, we can't get mad at ol' Chuckz.... he's a busy guy, and he's hardly making any profit off these retired industrial frames, considering how much shipping costs these days.
Looks mean as ____ without the mid-bar....killer build.
