Ladies' Western Flyer Fairway Flyer

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So I'm trying to get the women in my life interested in taking a bike ride with me now and again. Recently, both my wife and my daughter have made it clear that they prefer the 3-speed Shimano thumb click shifter on the girls' Free Spirit I picked up a couple of years ago to the vague 5-speed stem shifters on the numerous girls' Collegiates in my fleet. (Note to self: stop rescuing girls' Collegiates.) Problem is, that Free Spirit is the only girls' 3-speed I have. Must be time to start bike hunting!

Call me a heretic, but I'm not a fan of old S-A thumb shifters, so the Schwinn Breeze is out. A quick trip to FB Marketplace turned up this Western Flyer, which I picked up today.
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The elderly woman selling the bike insisted that according to the research she and her husband had done, this bike was from the 1950's and could be worth $300-$400 restored. I saw no point in correcting her, though I guessed early '70s based on the shifter and BMA sticker.
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Interesting center/side pull brakes:
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Pretty cool pedals, all 4 reflectors are intact.
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Nifty little odometer gizmo.
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The WESTERN FLYER lettering has gotten chalky the way some Schwinns do; I'm gonna have to be really careful cleaning it up.
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The paint kinda seems like a Spectraflame-type job with a metallic/aluminized base coat and a transparent color coat, and the color coat is wearing off in places.
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Can anybody help me decode this serial? Manufacturer and year? First two digits M0, so maybe Murray 1970, or is that too obvious?
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Murray for sure--the M.O. MFG CO is Murray of Ohio. The BMA/6 sticker puts it right around 73-74 I'd think. I'm not sure the serial# is very decode-able, but others here may know better.
 
cleaned it up some. tires robbed off another stalled project, worked on the chrome a little. At first the 3-speed seemed crunchy and uncooperative, and I thought maybe it was junk. but I eye-droppered a whole bunch of transmission fluid into the lube hole and rode it gently up and down the block while shifting thru the gears for a while and it seems to have loosened up.
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waiting for a rear brake cable to come in the mail, then I will take it for a shakedown cruise on a Thursday evening group ride. probably needs a new chain too; I doused this rusty crispy one in WD-40 just to get it to quiet down a little, but I don't have the patience to scrub it enough to make it nice and smooth.
 

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