Keith Courage

Good day vintage enthusiasts.
I've been reading these forums, specifically this folder, for quite some time. Since this is my first post I'd like to take the opportunity to thank each every person who has posted on here for the wealth of information they have offered me. I'm pretty new road biking (vintage) and without these forums I probably would have given up before I started. Thanks.

Anywho, I found this bike at a thrift store. It was pretty beat but only 3 dollars. So, I figured I could buy it and strip it of its parts to use as spares or what not. After I arrived home with my uuhhh "new" purchase I decided to see what info I could dig up on my newly acquired junker. After literally several hours of scouring the internet I found absolutely nothing. So anyone with the slightest of anything...
ANYTHING would be appreciated!
The bike has absolutely no stickers/decals/badges, save for the head badge that generically reads: "Samurai". No indication of there ever being any stickers/decals/ badges either.
Stamp on the bottom of the frame has 2 series of numbers: The first(top) being 145403. The second(bottom) being: SY43693N
With a name like Samurai, it would seem to me that this is possibly a mass produced department store bike badged with a "japanese sounding" name in order to grapple to Sales trend on Japanese bikes in the '80s.





https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...dyak1/sam3.bmp

*Eh, sorry about the pics. I'm not really sure what I'm doing yet.

T-Mar

Samurai were manufactured in Japan, however I'm not sure if it is a true Japanese brand or just a brand created by some US marketing firm. First impressions are 1970s, probably mid 1970s, and most likely bottom or second from the bottom of the line. Looks like a typical SunTour/Sugino/Dia-Compe set-up. If so, the components will have date codes that you can decypher using the info on https://www.vintage-trek.com/component_dates.htm . Good luck and post what you find out!

rymodee

sweetlittle baby jesus! does t-mar know everything?

USAZorro

If its about bicycles - just about.

USAZorro

I excerpted this from a search I did on bikelist.org - someone was recounting all the bikes they remember owning. Could this be what you have? Unfortunately not a lot to go off - does kind of give the impression that it may have been an "entry level" model as T-Mar suggests.

8. Pink/White/Blue Shogun Samurai. Tange Prestige tubing. First real =
road bike. Too small in retrospect, but the first bike I rode fast and =
rode on my first long rides. This was the bike that made me learn to =
love bicycling. Crunched by car when I rode in front of said car at an =
intersection on the Burke Gilman Trail.

I searched again on "Shogun" and found considerably more references - just none that seemed to shed a great deal of light on things - other than mentioning some history of the company and a couple of the other models of bicycles they produced.

If you get an education working on it, and/or get enjoyment riding it, $3.00 is a real bargain.

enduro

Wow, $3? All the thrift stores near me charge at least $50 for beater bikes. Ridiculous!

Looks like a pretty cool bike though--great conversation starter

Sorry I don't have any real info.

T-Mar

In this case Samurai was a model name and the brand was Shogun. Different brand completely. This particular model was mid-1980s or later and anything but anything but entry level, as Prestige was Tange's top line tubeset for the era.

Thank-you for the compliments. Having been an avid cyclist for over 35 years helps, as does having spent the mid-1970s working in an LBS. However, my biggest asset is having never thrown out any of the bicycling magazines or catalogues that I collected all those years. They are an invaluable resource for vintage bicycles. Give me a couple more days and I may even be able to find a road test or ad, to suggest a model name to go with the Samurai.

Keith Courage

Thanks for everyones helps so far!

Something I failed to mention in my original post is that I believe that whatever the manufacture of this bike was it is definitely a entry level bike. The components are pretty heavy. THe rear Der is a suntour GT. According to something I found in my notes a GT is bottom of the barrel stuff.

I haven't gotten date codes off of any of the other components but the RD's code states: PF.
https://www.vintage-trek.com/component_dates.htm says the first letter is the year and the second is the month by its numerical equilivalent (sp?). Thus, F equals 6 which equals June. Apparently date codes didn't start until after 1970 with the first year code being O (1970 to 1972). Since the year code here is P, I can safely assume that this RD is from '71, '72 to about '74. This all seemed like a logical guessing game to me, until I read this excerpt
"The original freewheel from my 1974 CCM Tour de Canada is stamped PA. I assume P =1974 or possibly 1973). This seems to mesh with the derailleur codes above." Tom Marshall, https://www.vintage-trek.com/component_dates.htm#suntour
Using all this information, I'm going to assume the bike is from 1973 or 1974.
I'm going to take off the other components and date them. Let you guys know what I find.

T-Mar

Yes, a P code makes the derailleur 1974, or possibly 1973. The GT was the bottom of the line for SunTour's wide range derailleurs. It's presence does not necessarily mean an entry level bicycle, but it does mean that the gearing was wider than the standard 14/28T freewheel and 42/52T chainrings found on most entry Japanese bicycles of this era. If it had come with this combination, the expected rear derailleur would have been the less expensive Honor.

All other things considered, the key to the bicycle's position in the line is the crankset. If it's a steel, cottered version , then it is probably the bottom of the line. A swaged, aluminum, cotterless design would infer second from the bottom of the line. It's hard to tell in the photo, but I thought it rather looked like a cotterless Sugino Maxi, hence my suggestion for second from the bottom of the line.