Originally Posted by
davei1980
It's funny you mention that because I originally thought it was a 1978 as well because I think the 1st two letters of the SN are "FP". My wife said there's no way her grandfather would have bought a bike in 1978 or after so she theorizes it's "FD" for 1968.
Turns out it is a 1979 model. The FPxxxxxx indicates a head tube stamped in
June 1978 and the 0309 badge stamp indicates that the bike was assembled on
Tuesday January 30th 1979. Since Schwinn stamped the head tube numbers before they were welded into the frames it is normal to see frame stamps that were done months or even years before the bikes were assembled.
To add to the enigma, the Sturmey-Archer hub is almost certainly not stock - I think this bike came with a 5 speed freewheel and a rear derailleur.
The 3-speed Sturmey-Archer hub was most likely original as it was available on the Collegiate Tourist in 1979:
At any rate, it's still way cool. I LOVE the lines on this bike, from the "camelback" top bar to the super cool, solid steel fork and the welds at the front are beautiful, looks almost like a carbon fiber bike. I am sure they used bondo or some other filler to get them that smooth.
The Schwinn electro-forged frame heads were made to appear as if they were built using
brass-filled "fillet-brazed" construction however the actual process was quite different and no filler was used. You can see how the unique Schwinn electro-forged frames were built here:
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/varsity.html
Here's a pic showing half of an electro-forged frame head tube being stamped:
