newbie hiawatha

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Jan 3, 2010
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westland MI
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got this hiawatha from my dads neihbor, when i was young living at home i always asked him when he wanted to get rid of it and he always told me 100 dollars so i never bought it. so my dad comes over last summer with it because the niehbor finally threw it in the trash along with a 74 schwinn womens bike so my dad snagged them for me. anyways id like to get an idea on what year this bike is.
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welcome! glad to see another hiawatha owner on here. looks like a dream come true.
 
sluginxlt said:
Wow, after all these years she's held up nicely! No dimples, no sags, few age spots, very few scars, etc. Oh, and the bike's not too bad either! :mrgreen:
 
yeah i cut the trucker girl out of sheetmetal on the band saw at work along time ago and thought it was a nice touch to the rust bucket, lol. i dont know what i wanna do with the bike yet, ive built other custom bike frames but because of this being so old dont know if i want to hack it up too bad. ive rode it quite a bit in its condition and have got some good comments on it from old timers, its been repainted by a brush but even the paint job is probably older then me by the looks of it . lol
 
any guess on its age??? i had it for a while before even noticing the skip tooth chain and never seen one till this bike and thats what made me realize it must be older than i originally assumed.
 
Welcome! Another Michigan member? Some general things to help date your bike. The skip tooth drive trains were used into the 50s and go back to some of the earliest diamond frame bikes. The rearward facing drop-outs at the back are another indication you have a older frame. I'm not a expert, but generally bikes with curved downtubes did not start appearing until the mid to lake 30s. So there you have it I helped narrow it down to a 25 year time span minus the years of WWII :roll: ! Wish I could be more precise. We have a few members that are way more knowledgeable than I am, so hopefully they will find this thread.
 
One thing you can do is buy a can of easyoff oven cleaner and spray your bike . Leave it on for a while, like maybe 30 minutes or so ,then wash it with a water hose and it will take off the house paint and sometimes the original paint underneath is in pretty good shape. Just be careful spraying and not get it in your eyes.
 
That's the chain guard my bike is supposed to have, mine was too rusted to save. If it helps, my Roadmaster (Cleveland Welding built both Hiawatha and Roadmaster) was ID'd as a 1949 frame.
 
I'd like to hazard a guess as to the year, but one thing that strikes me as different, is the little dip in the lower top frame tube at the front, my CWC Roadmaster frame doesn't have that. Also, your rear lower chain stays (I hope that's right) are straight, while my '49 is curved.

Wait for Phil (RMS37) to see this thread and he'll narrow it down.
 

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