..

hard to quantify "good"...my first conversion was a schwinn world sport, and it was great, in my opinion. they're midweight, lugged steel, with not-too-many odd sized parts (mine had a strange seatpost diameter)

so if you're looking for a temporary, beater, or experiment bike, it should do just fine.

If bikeforum gurus don't answer, check out sheldon brown's page on chicago schwinns.

schwinns from the early 80s back seem to have a fair number of odd sized and/or oddly made parts - at least by contemporary standards. (example: South Fulcrum and i have an 80s varsity on our stand right now that has what appears to be a "free wheel" crank and a fixed, multi speed rear hub allowing you to change gears while "coasting".) this, makes them hard to work on sometimes but if it is a chicago schwinn and all the parts seem to be present and in good shape, it should be kinda close to bomb proof. things to look out for:

- does the tubing appear more narrow than average? if so, this will cause trouble with replacing seat posts and HB stems.

- does it have single piece cranks? Even if they are in good shape, these can limit your choices for chain rings should you want to change them. There are adapters but this will add about $20 to your conversion which will be in addition to the new cranks and BB you'll have to buy.

how do i know this? i have a 73 continental with both narrow tubing and a single piece crank. i keep it - and keep working on it - simply because it is beautiful and fits me perfectly.

There is a thread on FGG you may want to check out. "Best Kept Secret..."

If you can deal with some of the idiosyncrasies of these bikes, you will end up with a bomb-proof sweet riding bike.

The 80's World Sports have fairly common sizing and parts and are a decent frame, as are several other inexpensive Japaneses made bikes from that era.

Sheldon's article about Japanese bikes covers the outsourced Schwinns. I don't know where it got started that Schwinn had any Giant-made bikes in the 70's and 80's, and I've never heard it from an authoritative source. That said, their Japanese bikes(Le Tour) were mid level quality, Schwinn made crappy(Varsity) to high(Paramount) right here in the states.Their downhill slide in the nineties might be when they started getting Taiwan bikes, but I've never heard of them getting outsourced labor from anyone besides Osaka, Japan(Panasoni) before then. Japanese bikes are underappreciated gems, in my book. I enjoy refurbishing them.

The Panasonic/Schwinn Paramounts are very nice and underappreciated frames. Some of the later Mississippi (I think that's where they built their second US factory, not completely sure off the top of my head) Schwinns are nice lugged and double-butted frames and also tend to sell for nothing. Tempo is the only one I'm familiar with, as a guy recently gave me one for fixing his other bike. Nice Columbus DB frameset. I know there are some others.

I have a Schwinn Traveler at my parents house that I made into a singlespeed. I absolutely love it. It's my "Yes, I am drunk. And yes I am riding to Mini-Mart to get a Hot Pocket" bike.

I have an extra wheelset, so once I get home I am going to haul that thing back out here and convert it.

http://groups.msn.com/BicyclingForum...o&PhotoID=9663

My Le Tour makes a nice commuter. It's running a 42x16t gear and rides on Tufos.

Another thing. People are always freakin' out when they get an older bike with 27" wheels, wanting to switch them to 700c. I find that it's more economical to keep them. It's still extremely easy to find and order the tires, and there are TONS of other old bikes that you can steal the wheels off of for cheaper than buying a new set.

I have a Schwinn Sports Tourer from 1980. The serial number on the right-rear dropout starts with a G (it has one extra digit from the decipherable Schwinn serial numbers), which according to www.oldschwinn.com (R.I.P.) meant that it was made in Taiwan by Giant. The headbadge does indeed say Chicago, but that is because the bikes were assembled there. The headbadge is also stamped with the dddy code idicating assembly date.

Again this was all gleaned from oldschwinn.com, which seemed like reputable source.

It did have a JIS stem, which is not suprising as most of Taiwan's bike business at the time was for Japanese companies.

I prefer riding on tubulars...that goodness for eBay.

I ride a sprint and though I havent seen any on FGG and only know of one person that has bothered to convert one of these otherwise lame bikes its been a dream to work with because everything seems to be sized normally. I've been upgrading my bike piece by piece and where some say I'm wasting my time I don't think so, becaue if anything I can always upgrade the frame at a later date. If you have it, or can get it cheap use it!

my favorite bike is my schwinn wolrld sport (just so you know, it's competition is an 80's nishiki road bike and one of the newer fuji track/road bikes). the schwinn just feels right. the only problem is, the fork's keep breaking. for whatever reason, right where the front axle goes into the fork keeps cracking and breaking. it's happened twice now. the first time i almost died. it was scary. the second time, i picked up on the crack before it broke completely, so that was no big deal. but it's still kinda scary that this keeps happenening to me. but man the bike rides like a dream. so smooth.

dan

I've always been attracted to Schwinn World Sport frames-My GF had a black SS World Sport that she picked up from the indispensable Bikes not Bombs in JP.

This past weekend, I picked up another World Sport on Austin's Craigslist. This will be my roommate and my first frame-up conversion. The Schwinn seemed a great candidate, since it's a 45cm frame and also features the Aqua/Yellow/White paint scheme of Team Zissou.

Now if I could only find some matching Adidas...

and a speedo

Nothing you can say from now on will dissuade me from the fact that you are awesome.

yeah i am the other guy with a sprint and i must say for the price (free) it rocks hard. and everything except the seatpost is pretty standard so you can just pop it over to another frame if a better one comes along. although you would need some pretty long long reach brakes to fit 700's on it. my long reach shimano on the front is bottomed even with 27's.

I still have the stock brakes and they still have a little reach to go with my current 27's. I just paid for my new Deep V's so hopefully they'll work with 700c or I'm going to be going brakeless.

her name is schwinnbikelover

where is she?

Carte Blanche? Awesome.

Seriously, when my roommate looked at the bike, her and I just turned to one another and said 'Zissou'.
The frame is this asilver-aqua matallic with those two-tone schwinn graphics in yellow and white. It's the Zissou Fix! Yeah, a speedo, red cap and a glock, and we're all set.

I'll post some pics as soon as we start work on it.