mkeller234

I noticed the fork crown on my Fuji doesn't match any of the catalogs. I have seen other bikes online with the same variation, so I know other Fuji bikes have them.

Does anyone know what it is? Did Fuji models vary widely depending on the supply of parts? My bike has "Yuko cold forged" dropouts, but I only see Suntour specified in some of the catalogs.

T-Mar

We just covered this fairly recently in another thread. It does appear on the Finest in the 1971 catalogue and the Track variants in the 1972 & 1973 catalogues. It's an Ishiwata 512 crown or a slight variant.

Edit: Found it! see All Things FUJI posts #840-848 for more discussion and examples of this crown.

mkeller234

T-Mar

About a decade ago, I instigated a thread to de-code the Fuji serial numbers. It quickly became evident that Fuji had more than one facility manufacturing their bicycles. A quick look at my serial number database indicates that circa 1971-1972, The Finest were coming out of at least two different facilities. It's possible that each facility had a decal set with a different font. If you look back at the catalogues from this era you'll see that your font was in existence but on other models. Unfortunately, while the database has a handful of Finest from this era, most of the pictures are no longer available and I am unable to confirm my hypothesis. Of course, the other possibility is that the previous owner replaced the OEM decals and selected the incorrect style.

The multiple facilities may also be the reason behind some other apparent anomalies, such as your fork style. While one facility may have converted to the new fork for 1972, it's possible that the other facility still had some old stock to use up. The probability of this explanation is not unreasonable given that you have a 1972 model with a late 1971 manufacturing date. The facility that manufactured your bicycle may just have been using up their supply of 1971 forks.