Originally Posted by
JonBailey
The so-called SCHWINN bikes now are not the same anymore. If I were rich, I would buy a 1970's Varsity and restore it to OEM specs down to every last screw.
You want quality in a modern bike, buy a Cannondale.
The nice Schwinn that I had was a 1983 World Tourist 5-speed in cinnamon red with Shimano freewheel chainwheel. The black grips had "Schwinn Approved" molded into them.
Some damn thief copped this bike when it was only a year old by cutting the chain lock and 1,000 miles were put on it including a 65-mile round trip from Novato to San Francisco, California in the summer of 1984. I was 19 in 1983 and this was my very first Schwinn. $279 back then from a Schwinn cycle shop in Mill Valley, California. I also got my first car and driver license that same year. A new Camaro. I got some money from a lawsuit from my mother. 1983: a new Schwinn, the dream came true after all the years of dept-store bikes and a new car!!
The 5-speed rear derailleur never missed a beat. Long-haul comfort on a men's 26" bike. I've always liked touring road bikes with straight handlebars. I never liked the look or feel of curved ten-speed bars. Some boys in school used to turn up the curved handlebars of their junior 24" Varsity and some older fellows liked to the same on their adult men's Varsity, Continental and other Schwinn ten-speed models: this was a common mod back then but I still thought it looked tacky. Pulling the tape off the curved bar and leaving it bare metal was also a common sight in the mid-1970's. You could get chrome fenders and a straight handlebar for your Schwinn ten-speed if you wanted to make it like a Collegiate or World Tourist tourer. Probably also had to change out the brake levers. On my new World Tourist, I soon pulled off the stock plastic thumb shifter on the handlebar and put a custom chrome Schwinn 5-speed shift lever on the stem of the handlebars reminiscent of 1970's Schwinn ten-speeds. Non-indexed shifting but still fun to shift by sound and feel.
https://bikehistory.org/catalogs/ima...ld_tourist.jpg
You would probably do yourself a lot more good going to the vintage bike forums and seeing about how you might acquire decent old Schwinns for short money rather than posting "my Amazon bike sucks" one more time.
Old Schwinns are really common, you could probably get set up without spending as much as you did on your Amazon Schwinn.