How much is this Schwinn Paramount worth?
 

I don't have pictures, unfortunately, but I'll try to describe it.

It's either a '71 or '72 Paramount. The guy is the original owner! I believe it's a P-15. It's got a triple chainring, and seems to be more of a touring setup. The paint's been damaged here and there, needs a good steel-wool-ing and touch up paint (It's Silver). The lugs look in good shape, a tiny bit of rust in one or two spots. Decals are missing bits and pieces.

Components: it gets a little weird.
Hubs: Campy
Rims:?? but not original
FD: Campy
RD: Le Tour? (Schwinn Approved) Not sure what it is, but not Campy
Cranks: Campy
Saddle: Original Brooks Professional, relatively undamaged
Stem: Cinelli
Handlebars: Campy
Brakes: Weinnman centerpulls
Shifters: Suntour bar-ends <--WTF?
Headset: Campy

It needs some work before it's in tip-top shape, but I plan on replacing a few parts and taking the whole thing apart for cleaning/overhaul. It's my size, and the guy's asking $300. I can't decide if it's an ok deal or not. But it's a Paramount! I've wanted one for a long time, and would probably make it into a touring setup.

Comments? Opinions?

It's worth $300. Buy it.

Certainly a good deal at $300. 500.-600. more likely, depending...

Rims probably would've been Weinmann originally, Suntour shifters probably not. Rear derailler may have been upgraded.

Oh, a Campagnolo triple like that went for 225. recently on ebay.

not to mention the brooks saddle... I'll take that off your hands... hehehehe.

I would buy it for $300

Schwinn changed the rear derailleur on the P15-9 from the Campy Gran Turismo to the Schwinn-Approved Le Tour GT-300 (rebranded Shimano Crane) in late 1972 because the Gran Turismo was a POS and Campy didn't have a decent long cage RD at the time. Schwinn used the GT-300 on the P15-9 until at least 1978.

The bar-end shifters on my 1972 P15-9 are Campagnolo, but the SunTour shifters work much better and may have been supplied on some units.

At $300, it's a helluva deal.

For something like that - buy first, ask questions later.

Awesome! Thanks for all the replies guys. I suspected I had found a good deal, but I just couldn't be sure because I don't know how cosmetic blemishes affect value.

Thanks Scooper, for the data on the RD. I was curious about that, I hadn't seen anything like that before. I know the Suntour bar-ends were post-purchase addons. I'm not a big fan of em, but who knows, I might warm up to them.

Thanks again everyone! I'm picking it up as soon as I can.

I believe it sold for $325 not $225.


If you don't buy it, I will.

That's great and very interesting info! :thumb:

It's odd that Schwinn literature stated that the Campagnolo bar-end shifters should not to be used with the NR Triple crankset. The simple Record front derailleur was the same as used for the standard Nuovo Record double set-up. I assumed because of the longer lever throw required to address all 3 chainrings, the bar-end unit would not work well. Schwinn offered their "Schwinn Twin-Stik" (stem mounted shifters) as an option in their catalogues. {I think this was basically a Suntour made stem-shifter set with a headset mounting bracket rather than a simple wrap-around stem clamp.}

BTW: Scooper, How are your Campy barend controls working with the triple cranks? ... I've been tempted to try a set on my '71 P15-9 ;)
Suntour's Barcon shifters were THE top "upgrade" component for changing from Campagnolo or Simplex or any other bar-end controls. They never slipped! I believe they were first introduced in 1973, and they were a stand-out superior product for their time. They may have been added onto that Paramount by the original owner very early - and would have been an excellent choice!

The Schwinn LeTour (Crane GS) rear derailleur would have been a big improvement on a 1972 Campy product! The Campagnolo Gran Turismo was really a shiny steel boat anchor which Campagnolo sold as a derailleur. Nobody wanted it, and I'm sure the folks in the Paramount works at Schwinn all groaned whenever one was mounted on a P15-9. I suppose bike shops would have loved the aftermarket replacement business, were it not such an embarrassment to explain to rich buyers. It was just used because it was the ONLY available Campagnolo derailleur which could handle their Triple cranks and the 14-31 freewheel (although use of the word "handle" is really stretching the point). It had a bad geomery, inevitably jammed up a chain, and the only thing to recommend it was they were so strong and heavy that the dropout would sometimes bend yet the derailleur survived... to offend, once again - and soon! :eek: Yeah, embarrassed to say, back in the 70s, I rode a shop-owned loaner bike with one (for around 3 weeks) thinking it was just my clumsy shifting :mad: ... in fact, everyone jammed it up too and sometimes crashed. :notamused:



That sounds like a great deal on the Paramount!:thumb:

Buy it right away!

The FD shifter moves the chain across all three chain rings, so it works fine. It's noisy while shifting, but that's not the shifter's fault. :D

Thanks for all that awesome info, stronglight. When I saw the Suntour bar-ends on there I was pretty dissapointed that he'd switched them out. But since I'm hoping to use this as a touring bike and I rather like the bar-ends on my LHT, I may as well get used to the Suntours.

A wealth of info on this site, I must say. Thanks for everything guys!

Don't buy it, because if you plan on steel-wooling it, taking off the touring specific parts to make it a touring bike, and you don't know if it's a good deal or not, then you haven't done your homework well enough to know how to not ruin a classic. That may sound harsh, but it's the truth. I'm far from being a Paramount fanboy, and I'm certainly not a concours-crazed preservationist, but there are a finite number of valuable classics out there and, with no insult intended, you sound like you don't know much about classic bikes.

Sure sounds like an insult to me. The OP is enthusiastic about this potential purchase and is obviously interested in learning. No other qualifications (except having money) are required.

Dammit, I was just coming back to delete it because as soon as I hit post I knew it was going to turn into one of these "It doesn't matter what you said, I think you mean this..." threads. Well, now that it's out there I guess I'd better defend it.

The bike in question takes an extremely cursory amount of initiative to research. It's one of the most well-documented, well-researched, and well-loved bicycle models of all time. In saying that the OP didn't seem to know much about it I wasn't being insulting or elitist, I was making an observation. When one asks or implies questions like "Is it worth $300," "What's a Le Tour rear derailleur," and "SunTour bar-ends<--WTF?," one makes it apparent they don't know anything about the bike. There's nothing wrong with that, everyone starts out in the same boat. However, with the OP's right-off-the-bat statement of what he thought was wrong with it and what he was going to change it's difficult not to cringe. Whomever assembled the bike made intelligent choices for it's running gear that made real sense for it's intended purpose, which you yourself have pointed out. The fact that the OP doesn't seem to realize this is again reflective of his lack of experience. I guess it's the attitude that's disconcerting.

Let me sum it up by making the following analogy. In the neighborhood I grew up in there was a teenager with rich parents that bought him a new Corvette. All it takes to acquire a Corvette is the requisite amount of money and being in the right place at the right time. However, what it takes to operate a Corvette is a bit of expertise that can't be bought at any price. Suffice it to say that when he hit a friend of mine he hospitalized three people and ruined a fine automobile, he had the money, but not the know-how.

That said I will apologize for any implicit insult in my post and amend my initial statement of "Don't buy it" to : Buy it if you like, and we'll all be happy to answer your questions about it, but please understand before you do anything hasty that this is a forum of enthusiasts and plenty of folks would love to have that bike just the way it is. It's not an LHT.

Ok, makes perfect sense now, you're upset about rich kids getting Corvettes, and we need to save all the high end consumer goods in America for true enthusiasts. Good luck with that.

I'm actually really impressed that you can judge how much I know about bicycles by a couple questions about monetary value on a website! :thumb:

I guess I should just quit building bikes, I never even realized I was so clueless. I had no idea the Schwinn Paramount was such a popular bike, I'm surprised you've even heard of it! I definitely didn't ask that question here because I like these forums and wanted to hear what people had to say, it was because I really have no idea what's going on.

Thanks for enlightening me.

Definitely still getting the bike so I can ruin it.

You're right, I'm the anti-christ. This is why I spend most of my time typing responses to threads here and then deleting them, get a little blood in the water and it's flame on. I echo a sentiment that is voiced daily here in C&V and I'm a villain. I'll keep this thread in mind the next time someone implores a "newbie" not to re-paint, not to powdercoat, not to hack-off braze-ons, not to convert to fixed gear. I point out that steel-wooling the chrome is a bad idea and that the components on the bike are already a touring set-up and this is somehow different? God bless the intardnets for bringing us all together. The OP asked for comments and opinions, I gave an honest one.

Don't let me interrupt though, please by all means see how else you can bend my words. Perhaps if you are creative enough you can edit the above paragraph into a haiku about how I embody all that's wrong with the world today.

Woo-hoo flame war on purevl, let's do this ****! Give me all you got, I'm dying for it.

After all I deserve it, I'm never helpful, I never answer questions or offer meaningful advice. In fact, I don't contribute at all to this forum except to ask what stuff is worth and try to sell stuff in the for trade thread.

I had another sarcasm-laden post all typed up, but decided I don't feel like carrying this on.

I think you misunderstood what my intentions for the bike were. I'm not going to steel wool any of the chrome, just the corroded paint chipped areas. And the only components I wanted to replace were the shifters, because I wanted it to be closer to the original setup.

Please stop assuming you know that I'm going to f*** up the bike.

good advice

If the thought, energy and typing that went into a flame war had instead been put into giving the guy solid advice about what to do and what NOT to do, we'd all be better off.

Hey, my frame has corrosion inplaces where the paint was chipped and beneath the paint in some areas (ate throught pinholes?). What should I do about that?

Agreed.

At the least you'll have to sand down the affected areas to clean metal and touch-up or repaint. If it were only surface rust an oxalic acid bath would probably do the trick, but given that it's rusting under the paint the acid will have difficulty getting in there. If there are pinholes and they aren't too severe they can be braze-filled, or if the tube is compromised structurally it can be replaced. Either of those options would best be performed by a framebuilder so cost will quickly become an issue if there is serious damage.

I was not clear about pinholes. There were probably pinholes or small chips in the paint (not in the steel tubes) which allowed moisture to corrode under the paint (filiform corrosion).

If I understand you correctly, I should remove the paint, clean the rust off using oxalic acid (Naval Jelly) and then touch up the paint job. Is that correct?

Naval Jelly ≠ Oxalic Acid

Naval Jelly is phosphoric acid, which is more acidic than oxalic acid. You'll probably be fine using it but it may be a little harsher on paint and chrome than OA. If there is filiform corrosion under the paint then yes, you understood me correctly. First remove the paint and rust --Either scrape the paint off and use the rust removing acid of your choice or simply sand both the paint and the rust away-- taking care to get all of the rust and then apply something to protect the surface, such as paint. A search of Oxalic acid or rust removal will turn up a number of exhaustive threads on the subject. Good luck!