Are they regualr brand or "schwin" brnad? I am looking at picking up a cheep xl sized girl's bike to strip for parts for the Shogun. Good plan?

Well, it depends on what era you are talking about. The boom era chicago schwinns parts were branded as Schwinn but actually made by companies like Huret, Atom, Shimano, Dia-Compe, Weinmann and maybe others. I would say it is a bad idea to consider one of these as a parts bike, because the parts were mostly all steel and very heavy. Also, the seatpost, stem, front derailleur clamp and handlebars were sized differently than your Shogun.

If you are talking about an 80's asian made Schwinn then it probably has "normal" parts branded by their manufacturers. They also had alloy rims, the 80's era parts are probably at least decent.

One other point, I don't think the women's framed Schwinns were ever equipped much better than entry level. There were women's Paramounts, but I doubt they are common.

+1 Juvenile Schwinn bikes were usually pretty junky. I would aim a little higher for your parts. Ideally, you should be able to find a Japanese or Taiwanese bike from the era with decent/better than decent components.

I built up my wife's Centurion mixte frame with a Sanwa (Taiwan) donor.




Sanwa 215 Donor:

+1 on most of what mkeller said.
I would add that, although heavy steel parts that they were, they were made for durability, not light weight. Back in that day (when Schwinn had a REAL, no-time-limit lifetime warranty), they didn't want bikes to come back with broken parts. So, they outsourced to parts makers with strict specifications as for durability to be followed. If the manufacturer's parts met those specs, they got the label "Schwinn Approved" stamped on them. In the late 70's (give or take), due to Japanese competition, Schwinn could no longer maintain that great workmanship/warranty AND still sell bikes. They dropped the "S.A." label, and, for a little while used lower-end European parts before succombing to "doing business like everyone else" (i.e. outsourcing to Japan). Needless to say, "Schwinn" doesn't mean what it used to.
I still have a handful of old Huret Allvit rear deraillers that I save for old redo jobs. Heck, they have STEEL jockey pulleys with serviceable BALL BEARINGS! Heavy, yeah - but they will last a lifetime.

^I agree with that. I am sure most Schwinn owners were very very rough on their bikes and rarely if ever performed any maintenance on them. I assume most of the Schwinns I work on still have the original grease.

Choosing which parts to use is all about what goals you have for your bike. I own a few of the bottom end Schwinns and they make very nice short errand around town bikes, steel rims and all.