stupferich2003

Hey all I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I got my new project as a present, a mid seventies opaque red Schwinn Le Tour frame set. Its abused, crusty and missing most of its parts except for the crank. I plan on making a trick single speed or fixed gear out of it. In inspecting that smooth panasonic built lugged frame, I never saw a serial number....anywhere !! It has the original paint and decals including the dealer sticker where it was bought, but no ID code of any kind. The original crank set has the numbers "170" and "35" on the back of the arms. Now my Pug had all the date codes stamped on its components which made things easy. But I do not know much at all about these old Suntour numbers...so this crank is an enigma to me. All of the Schwinn sites I have found only give ID codes to the Chicago built frames and not the early imports. Any help from any old Schwinn fans would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and happy new year all !!

luker

Look at Skip's pages - Vintage-trek.com. He has broken down most of the two letter date codes (and the suntour parts will have little date codes stamped somewhere inconspicuous - like in between the two brake caliper arms or something).

well biked

If there's a head tube badge on the frame, there should be four small numbers stamped on it. The first three digits represent the day of the year the frame was made, and the last digit represents the last digit of the year. Example, assuming it's a 1970's frame: 1665 would indicate the frame was built on the 166th day of the year 1975. If it were an '80's frame, the 5 would indicate 1985, etc.