First of all sorry if this is the wrong place for this.

Okay so I'm trying to figure out what kind of bike this is all I have is these pictures and that it's a shwinn. The person who has it doesn't have any idea and is away so they aren't able to take other pictures or read what the decals say. I know is a long shot but if anyone knows that'd be super helpful. If not any ideas or suggestions on where to look?

DEFINITELY NOT a Schwinn...

It's a 1970 gas pipe department store bike! These were the kinds of bikes that brought about the US CPSC coverage of bicycles in the mid 70's (Consumer Protection Safety Commission).

Bikes like this one sold for under $70 USD. Very few were sold by bike shops. Sometimes that had t be assembled by customers other times it was done by inexperienced store clerks! Most of them have been recycled long ago.

The reason why I'm so negative about this bike is that these were so poorly constructed and used such poor quality components that they verged on being dangerous! We called them "Kid Killers" back then!

There's a Kia patiently waiting for this bike to arrive from the crusher!



verktyg

Chas.

Wow, it has downtube shifters.

Yep, a department store special. Looks like Huret shifters and derailleurs, probably the highest quality (and that's relative) components on it aside from the wingnuts. I'd spend my money elsewhere, if I were you.

The handlebars look like they aren't in the original shape either.

Those fork crowns scream, "Danger Will Robinson, Danger!" I remember how those bikes creaked and you could never determine the source because it was the WHOLE bike.

Stay away.

The Corvair of "10 speed bikes"... Unsafe at any speed!

During the bike boom the buzz word was: "10 Speed Racing Bike". Anything with 2 wheels got derailleurs thrown on it!

Many bikes like the one in question were "resistance" welded; a form of electro-arc welding where the mitered tubes were pressed together and an electrical charge was sent through them causing enough heat to melt the contact points and fuse the tubes together. Sort of like spot welding but very poorly designed and executed. There was little or no weld penetration and no fillet buildup. It wasn't uncommon for the whole head tube to break away from the frame (riding over curbs and so on).

In the US at that time, bikes were still viewed as "kid's toys". That was one reason some of the stupidest requirements were written into the CPSC regulations (US Consumer Protection Safety Commission). For example, a 3" diameter cylinder had to roll over every surface of a bike and not get caught on anything. That's why Campy had to change a number of their components including the quick releases on brakes and hubs!

verktyg

Chas.

no.

I think what made bikes like this so bad (unsafe) were the brakes. the type that anyone other than the store owner where I worked would turn away.
Repair took 3x the time for half the benefit.
Rebuild the wheels, often so bad that only 2/3rds of the wheel's spokes were in tension… buy a complete set of brakes and at least it would run.
I could go on with what was typically wrong but the bottom line from everyone here is not this bike.

A lot of good points being made about this kind of bike's durability and function related short-cuts made to produce a $69 bicycle in the early 1970's.
I'll add to that the very limited frame size options offered on such bikes.

Also however we have to keep in perspective the eternal market demand for "disposable" bikes that involve a paltry investment.
Such bikes fill the needs of parents whose children may immediately leave their new bike unlocked, or who themselves may use such bikes as lock-and-leave transportation to a train, bus terminal or street-corner market.

The frames of such bikes were, until perhaps around 1990, typically hastily hand-brazed together, so without adding any material for a visible radius of brass. Spot-type resistance welding at select other points often completed the frame structure, not to be confused with Schwinn's own electroforging factory process.

Bikes at such price points have NO added anything that will add cost: no durability beyond what the market is deemed to require, no cosmetic finishing beyond what is needed to get the bike out the door of the store, and no such comfort enhancement as easy-to-modulate braking performance.
These are in today's market perhaps more like "3rd-world" merchandise when viewed by those more familiar with bike shops: they satisfy short-term needs of those in need of a very basic, limited-use bicycle.

Believe it or not, the makers of these bikes very much want to satisfy the requirements of the box stores that buy them, and the box stores in turn very much want to offer the customer as much in the way of perceived value as possible. That's all there is to it however, and aside from liability issues and also the inevitable product reviews that may turn up on a box store's website, no evidence of any passion for added quality is evident.

It's very easy to judge low-cost merchandise as unworthy when one has more money and product knowledge than does the intended customer of such products, but is also in some ways very unfair.

Schwinn took excellent, if heavy, "upright touring" 3-speed bikes and added derailer gears, leather saddle and a rather poor choice of 7/8" steel handlebar to create the Varsity, which the market demanded.
Others, like the builder of this bike, simply aimed for a less well-funded customer and produced a bike that they hoped would produce maximum sales volume and profit at the department store. It is what it is, and can be ridden gently for possibly a good long time if it is firstly checked over and then maintained in good condition.
Most consumers today would find no value in fixing up or maintaining this bike, unless money were very tight and there were no better choices in sight.
But it just might be perfect for use where theft of the bike or parts were a persistant likelihood.

Au contraire non ami....

During the early 70' the 10 Speed Bike Boom was such a big FAD that anything with 2 wheels and derailleurs were being thrown together and shipped out as fast as they could box em' up.

They were a WHOLE lot of people who tried to cash in and make a fast buck off of the FAD!

Many had no knowledge or interest in bikes or cycling!

Back then, most bikes were still considered "kid's toys". The majority of "lightweight' bikes sold during the bike boom were bought by high school and college students or their parents.

Most buyers had little or no knowledge about bikes. Why spend $70 to $100 for a kid's toy when you can get a new 10 speed bike from K-Mart or other chain or department stores for a lot less money! (you could still get a VW beetle for $1900 USD and a full size low end Chevy for $2300)

Schwinn dealer used the hard sell on parents, pointing out how their bikes were built like tanks! "Here, pick this up, it weighs 40 pounds! It's kid proof..."!

Most bikes built in the US in the 1950s were substantially welded or brazed. They became the beach bombers and MTBs in the mid 70's.

The companies that made those CHEAP department store bikes knew exactly what they were doing! It wasn't until lawyers stepped in that safety improvements took place!

So no revisionist history or apologies needed!

verktyg

Chas. Retro Grouch

It's true that the need for product liability protection begat improvements in quality control, including final assembly.

But the OP's bike shows no defects that I can see. If it were produced by a company that intended to stay in business (remember, many of the "fast-buck" opportunists of the bike boom years bought their bikes from reliable, experienced bike-building contractors), there would be some minimum of quality standards fully in effect, with only final assembly left in trust to the seller.

Certainly major bike-shop brands were not immune to defects like inadequate (for perhaps the first month of use) spoke tension or frame-joint inadequacy. I bought a new Trek once with serious frame misalignment, and a new Cannondale with unlined aero brake cables that caused a wipe-out mid-corner. A new DiamondBack Expert road bike lost seemingly all rear wheel spoke tension on the third ride!
I lack the data to say that department store bikes back then were of uniformly bad initial quality of the type that would fail even the disposable-bike crowd's expectations, and I suspect that some dealers worked hard to meet customer's expectations and avoid the dreaded call-backs. It is all a statistical game.

Of course, low-quality bikes are more of a challenge to work on, and the work isn't always reflected in even a half-decent service interval. Today's WalMart bikes suffer from such odd failures as hub cups working loose, which can make for a difficult shimming job. And or course the "suspension" components that they apply to boost sales are poor to the point of "why bother".
I actually think that the OP's bike, barring perhaps it's chromed rims and steel calipers, is possibly a better bike than what one might buy today at some stores.

And of course almost any bike is better than no bike.

One must also keep in mind the manner in which any machine is assembled before it is sold. Big box stores, if they did not assign bike assembly to the most junior and lowest-paid employee, typically hired a crew that came in periodically and slapped together all the bikes in stock so they could be sold (Assembly $10 extra!) if the customer chose not to take the product home in a box and do it himself. This was piecework and the quality of assembly reflected this, depending on the contractor in question.

Most bike shops, on the other hand (and I may be giving undue credit to "most" shops based on the engineer-owned one I learned at), took at least a little care in the assembly and setup, and pride in the quality and consistency of the work. The same Brand X bike sold by the big box store would be much more likely to have been shoddily assembled and adjusted than the very same bike built by almost any "real" bike shop.