A while ago I visited the remnants of a bicycle factory here in Israel. They made clunkers when there were import restrictions and somehow survived afterwards by making delivery tricycles.
They also had a steel rim rolling machine, rim drilling machine and chrome tanks. Such equipment was common in the low-end of the industry. Ross bicycles in Allentown,PA made them as well up through the 80's.
Rim making equipment is very simple. Hub and crank making equipment is not, as forging requires real skill and quality control, which is why I mentioned those parts.
Schwinn Paramount hubs have unique screw-on flanges (or so I heard). Airlites, Duralites, Bayliss-Wileys, etc had press fit or thermal fit flanges. I'm curious if any other company used this design.
Paramount telephone-dial hubs, sure were pretty as was amost anything having to do with Paramounts.
Amir Avitzur R"G, Israel
-----Original Message----- From: Harvey Sachs [mailto:hmsachs@verizon.net] Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 3:21 AM To: Classic Rendezvous; avitzur@013.net Subject: [CR]Pre-War Schwinn Paramount Parts
Amir actually asks two questions, but I don't have definitive answers to either:
1) were the Paramount parts designs exclusive to Schwinn? I don't know for sure. I have never seen cranks quite like the Paramount design(s) - there were at least two (early, late). That is not conclusive, of course. WRT the hubs, I got confused once, but there are a couple of features that I haven't seen on others - but I haven't looked at lots of others, either. First, the barrel was a single piece, with the bearing cups ground into it. This may have been common; I haven't taken down others of the ear. Second, the axles were very distinctive (but probably not unique): The cones were not threaded, but prevented from moving by a pair of locknuts. Instead, the cones rode with very little clearance on polished surfaces on the axles. This was called a "vacuum fit," and is pretty neat. Gave better concentricity than a threaded part, but I don't know if it mattered. The axles were also necked down in the middle, and bored out at the ends. The former feature would weaken them in bending.
FWIW, the lower-level Schwinn Superior did not use the vacuum cones and spindles (the whole axle set will interchange), and the superior used a different lock nut on the rear cog. Might have had a different cog threading (?), but I don't remember for sure.
2) Did Schwinn make the stuff in-house? Again, I don't know for sure, but I'm quite confident they had the capability to do this kind of work (except, perhaps, for the raw forgings). I believe they made their own rims, and I watched the wheel assembly machines in action in '74.
I guess the point is that the designs were likely to have been exclusive, but the actual component manufacture may have been jobbed out to any of hundreds of machine shops and chrome shops in the area - just as frame assembly was in many cases.
harvey sachs mcLean va usa. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ BSA, Raleigh, Schwinn and Zeus (and maybe Hirondelle/Manufrance) were, at some point, producing almost all the parts for their bikes.
BSA and Raleigh had huge factories making their components and frames.
What's the story with Pre-war Schwinn Paramounts and Superiors? Did they make their own parts, or did they have them made for them?
I ask because their hubs and cranks look a lot like the competition's.
Amir Avitzur
Ramat-GAm, Israel