Schwinn's annual sales soon neared the million mark, and the company turned a profit in the late 1980s. With this partnership, Schwinn increased their bicycle sales to 500,000 per year by 1985. In Taiwan, Schwinn was able to conclude a new production agreement with Giant Bicycles, transferring Schwinn's frame design and manufacturing expertise to Giant in the process. Supplied by manufacturers in Asia, the new arrangement enabled Schwinn to reduce costs and stay competitive with Asian bicycle companies. The company took advantage of the continued demand for mountain bikes, redesigning its product line with Schwinn-designed chrome-molybdenum alloy steel frames. You will need to pay attention to paint schemes and colors, seat binding posts, drop outs, serial number structure, font, and size, welding construction, and other ‘tells’.According to Arnold, Schwinn and Company, Chicago, IL This is not as simple as it sounds because nearly all manufacturers made very similar frame styles. While this may seem obvious the first thing to do is to make sure you are looking at a Schwinn frame. After the war all boys 26” tire frames were 18”. In the prewar years Schwinn offered their boys 26” tire models in several different frame sizes (16”, 18”, and the so-called ‘tall frame’ 20”).

The juvenile models mimicked the adult models to a large degree. The girls frames were pretty much the same and were differentiated between model lines largely by paint schemes or equipment e.g. This article will not cover either girls or juvenile models. I am not going to try and associate the models to the frames because both straight bar and cantilever frames were used for Autocycle models and trying to explain Motorbike, Cycleplane, Standard, Super Deluxe, etc… gets complicated. Many different models were built on these frames. Essentially there are three basic styles the straight bar, the DX, and the cantilever frames. This article is not going to cover all the varieties of frames Schwinn built through the years of which there are many.

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