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The first four numbers should be a two digit month followed by a two digit year. The last four digits are the serialization digits 0000 to 9999 depending on what number the frame was of the years production. If the frame was made overseas in Taiwan, it gets more complicated. If the number starts with a K, the frame was made by Kinesis. This tool searches a database of Schwinn serial numbers and if it finds a match to your serial number then it will display the information available for your bike. Notes: This tool works for Schwinn bikes from 1948 to 1982. All serial number records before 1948 were lost in a factory fire. Serial Number Location. Aug 29, 2020 1/4/2018 0 Comments How I Made a Carbon FiberEpoxy Composite Bike in my Garage, by Damon Rinard. Early years have been estimated by the Company. My bike is a beam bike, with the. Though very well built, they were some of the cheapest bikes on the market. How I Made a Carbon FiberEpoxy Composite Bike in my Garage, by Damon Rinard. This bare bones geometry.
Hercules and Sachs. The partnership of Hercules and Sachs began as early as 1905, when Ernst Sachs invented the torpedo brake hub which provided a revolution in bicycle manufacture – and in bicycle sales. Hercules sold motorcycles fitted with a variety of manufacturer’s engines. The photo above is from 1930. Hercules Bicycle Serial Numbers If this album is anything like their previous releases, then it's possible I have missed out. Eddie's voice is still strong gives it a full workout on Lightning Bolt.
13. Hercules Werke AG, Nurnberg, Germany
Hercules Werke AG, Nurnberg, Germany
The German Hercules company was a completely separate bicycle and motorcycle manufacturer, with only the name in common with its British counterpart. They made bicycles, motorcycles, cyclemotors, mopeds, scooters, and cars.
‘Hercules Werke AG’ opened its doors in 1903 Nuremberg with their first motorcycle being an engine hung on a heavy-duty bicycle frame as many others were doing. Drive was direct from the engine to the rear wheel via belt. Hercules outsourced engines from many other companies rather than make their own engines.
Hercules’ main focus in its early years was on motorcycles with small capacity engines. They began to increase to larger machines in the thirties and even saw some competition and long distance endurance success.
They made various commercial vehicles between 1905 and 1928. In 1932, when tax reductions made 3-wheeler cars profitable, they brought out the two-seater Hercules Coupe (below), powered by a 200cc ILO engine. It was only in production for one year.
World War II resulted in heavy damage to the Hercules factory and production did not resume until 1950. The company developed a number of new models and stuck with those models for many years which helped them survive a downturn in the German economy shortly after their release. Hercules became one of the largest motorcycle producing companies in Germany. In 1966 the company merged with the Zweirad Union which also included DKW, Express and Victoria. In 1974 Hercules released the Wankel powered W2000 and were the first company to produce a motorcycle with a Wankel rotary engine.
Hercules – now known as Hercules-Fahrrad GmbH & Co – continue to make bicycles. The ad below is from 1980:
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My main interest in the German company is their involvement with Sachs, as this eventually led to the development of a very refined cyclemotor engine just before WW2. With the declaration of war in 1939, there had been no time to develop this ‘Saxonette’ further. Run keygen in sandbox. But DKW engineers re-designed it during the war. Their plans were impounded by the British after the war, and led to the arrival of the Cyclemaster.
You can read more about it at the Cyclemaster Museum.
Photo2dvd studio 3 keygen for mac. **********************************
Hercules and Sachs
The partnership of Hercules and Sachs began as early as 1905, when Ernst Sachs invented the torpedo brake hub which provided a revolution in bicycle manufacture – and in bicycle sales.
Hercules sold motorcycles fitted with a variety of manufacturer’s engines. The photo above is from 1930.
When Sachs introduced the 74cc engine, the two companies again combined to provide all the necessary post-sales requirements such as dealer-training and customer service.
Hercules Lilliput with 98cc Fichtel & Sachs engine
This 1936 brochure shows the 98cc Sachs-powered Hercules model, called the ‘Lilliput.’
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Hercules Saxonette 60cc Cycle-Attachment, 1938-1939
Although cycle-attachment engines had been manufactured pre-war, the Saxonette ‘help-motor’ was a very refined version. As it was put on the market in 1938 it was essentially the first of what we could describe as the post-war style of cyclemotor. The rear-mounted engine was built around the Sachs Torpedo hub, similar to the BSA Winged Wheel.
This revolutionary new design was presented to the public at the Berlin Motor Show in 1937. The factory supplied the engine already fitted to the wheel to various bicycle manufacturers, and the first machines went on sale in July 1938. Companies that sold the unit in their bicycles were:
Anker-Werke, Assmann, Bauer & Co., Bismarck AG, Brennabor-Werke, Brüsselbach, Dürkopp-Werke, Exelsior-Werke, Göricke, Gritzner-Kayser, Hainsberger Metallwerke, Hercules, Meister, Miele & Cie, Panther, Patria-WKC, Presto, Rixe & Co., Torpedo, Urania-Fahrradwerke, Victoria, Walther & Co., Wanderer-Werke AG.
The bicycle factories supplied their own petrol tanks; but it was also possible to buy the engine/wheel direct from Saxonette and fit it to your own bicycle with a 26″ wheel.
Some companies provided a wide range of colours for their bicycles fitted with the Saxonette.
However, despite Fichtel & Sachs excellent reputation – they were renowned for extensive and continuous testing of their products – the new 60cc engine had many problems and not many were sold. A circular was issued to customers in August 1938 to explain some of the issues.
The engine had been tested by the factory under full load. However the engine was less likely to be ridden by purchasers under full load, so the plug was likely to oil up. Bosch developed a new spark plug for it, the W95T1.
As it was fitted to a variety of frames, the factory could not test the engine with them all; the ignition cable could rub against some frames, become porous and short-circuit. A protective tube was issued.
Carburettor seals, nozzles, petrol pipes and filters were inefficient.
The carburettor required cleaning and basic maintenance.
People had problems with the twist grips. It had a pressure point to avoid the speed exceeding 25 kph (the speed that the factory deemed safe on a bicycle).
Customers were generally not sufficiently technically-minded to deal with these issues themselves, and this caused real problems for dealers selling the Saxonette.
If war had not interrupted its manufacture, it’s possible that Sachs would have redeveloped their engines and might have dominated the cycle-attachment market in the same way as they did with lightweight motorcycle engines.
But, as it was, production stopped in 1939, the DKW engineers copied and refined the Saxonette engine to produce the ‘Radmeister,’ those plans were confiscated by the postwar Interpro Bureau, awarded to EMI of Britain as Cyclemaster Ltd and, as they say, the rest is (Cyclemaster) history…
The illustration above shows the Hercules Gents bicycle fitted with the 60cc Saxonette engine; a Ladies/Gents version is illustrated below.
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German Hercules as Prior
After the War, Hercules/Sachs were ideally set up for distribution abroad, and most Sachs engined mopeds used the Hercules name. Interestingly, Great Britain already had a well-established bicycle manufacturing company called Hercules, that was not connected to the German marque.
When The British Hercules company introduced their own moped in 1954 – they claimed it to be Britain’s first home-built moped – they had to change its name from the ‘Hercules Grey Wolf’ (the name used when it was launched) to ‘Her-cu-Motor.’ You can see a picture of my original Grey Wolf below; it uses a JAP engine.
The Moped Archive shows the picture below, of a 1935 Hercules Lilliput that was sent to the JAP company in Great Britain for assessment. Because of our own Hercules company, the German import was renamed ‘Prior.’
When the postwar German Hercules R200 Scooter was sold in Great Britain, it was also rebadged as a Prior, with the model name Viscount. It had been developed by the German Triumph company (TWN).
The Prior Viscount had a Sachs 200 engine, which was also fitted to the Messerschmitt (the Viscount below is a 1959 model).
The Prior name was also used for some exported Hercules/Sachs mopeds, such as the 1960 model pictured below:
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It comes to something when, after all those years of adorning stylish machines, that Herculean name is eventually displayed on a moped and motorcycle as androgynous as the two folks eating ice creams behind them. But that’s progress, I suppose.
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HOW OLD IS MY BICYCLE?
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‘How old is my bicycle?’ is a question I get asked a lot, nearly as much as: ‘I have a bicycle that looks like one of yours; if I send you pictures please can you identify it for me?’
The answer, in short, is that I do not have time to tell you either. I’m not being callous about this. With an estimated 15,000 bicycle manufacturers, the odds are stacked against me recognizing yours; in any case, I do not claim to be an expert, just an assiduous recorder of information. To sift through information to try and find similar pictures to your unidentified bicycle would take me months, and I’m already doing similar research on my own bikes. Not only do I have a full-time job (I run my own business restoring and selling vintage vehicles) and am a hands-on parent of a young child, but I spend a minimum 30 hours every week building, updating and maintaining these free websites to help you do your own research. My hobby usually takes a backseat. Insomnia is my saving grace, otherwise there would be no time for any of this.
My purpose for creating these databases is simple. In the ‘old days’ (a time which seems to have ended in the past twenty five years or so), a youngster became an apprentice in a chosen field and learned its history from the older employees. Thus, for example, an apprentice mechanic was handed down an invaluable unwritten guide to repairing vehicles that could not be learned at college nor from books, because, as well as specific information about various models, it helped a youngster understand the way they were designed and built.
Similarly, to learn about vintage bicycles, we ask questions of our elders in the hobby. The key point here is that the elders who were around while our favourite vintage machines were still on the road are no longer with us, the last of them having passed on in the past thirty years or so. Now we must depend on those who gleaned that first-hand knowledge from them; these chaps were the ‘youngsters’ then, but now they’re getting older themselves, most in their seventies and eighties. They don’t usually use computers, so much of their knowledge is stored in their heads. By the time we learn from them, it’s second-generation information. My contemporaries and I are in a younger age group – forties to sixties – and we’re busy learning and recording what we can before it’s lost forever. We study 100-year-old magazines to see when certain new innovations were first reviewed (it helps us date bicycles with similar features), read correspondence of the time to try to understand contemporary views and opinions, research old catalogues, meet fellow enthusiasts, help each other with restorations, ride our old bikes as much as possible, and work with our elders to pick up tips and wisdom.
If you can help in any way by contributing to this research, please get in touch. My email is embedded in the picture below.
By recording and sharing this knowledge while it’s still as fresh as possible, our fabulous vintage hobbies will continue for centuries to come.
TO FIND OUT HOW OLD YOUR BIKE IS – JOIN THE VETERAN CYCLE CLUB!
Although we are in the so-called ‘Information Age’ and the internet provides a surplus of it – some of it accurate, much of it misleading – there is nowhere near enough information on vintage bicycles. This surprises many people. Sometimes, folks with no experience of the vintage hobby who may have recently unearthed an old bicycle contact me and demand that I immediately tell them what it is, how old it is and what it’s worth. I try to explain as politely as possible that such a service does not exist, and they are often abusive as a result. Usually they want me to identify it so they can sell it on ebay. Luckily, I remembered an old Sufi saying, ‘Only explain things to people in a language they understand.’ So now I answer that such a service, which will obviously increase the value of their unidentified machine, will cost them £50 + VAT. It’s still not a service I actually offer – but at least they are less abusive.
The question remains: ‘How old is my bicycle?’ Also, ‘I have a bicycle that looks like one of yours; if I send you pictures please can you identify it for me?’
The answer is simple. The Veteran Cycle Club (V-CC) has a system of ‘marque enthusiasts’ – volunteers who compile what information they can about particular manufacturers. By joining the V-CC you can access whatever information is available. If that doesn’t help, if it is interesting enough, you might be able to send pictures of it to the the V-CC magazine, or take it to vintage shows and ask exhibitors, or keep an eye on ebay to see if something similar ever comes up. Identifying an unknown bicycle is hard work. You may be lucky, but more than likely it will remain a mystery.
As I have stated before, the V-CC archives and Ray Miller’s Encyclopaedia are invaluable resources: these ongoing projects are becoming the world’s primary source of information on vintage bicycles. The V-CC’s system of marque specialists is unrivalled throughout the world. I recommend every vintage bicycle enthusiast to join the V-CC to access these (and many other) excellent facilities.
FRAME NUMBER DATING
Bicycles that can be dated with 100% accuracy are the exception. Marque enthusiasts use records of shop ledgers that recorded dates sold and frame numbers, and then calculate the ages of other bicycles by comparing them with known frame numbers. Sometimes the date sold does not reflect when a bicycle was actually manufactured (for example, Dursley Pedersens were very expensive, badly marketed and often took a long time to sell). Only certain manufacturers’ frame number sequencing is known. Many did not use chronoligical sequences.
Many manufacturers used ‘bought-in’ bikes at different times, ie made by a different company. This happened in particular in the 1890s when frame styles changed every few years. Frames made by top companies with the old designs were sold off through the trade, so smaller companies then sold bicycles using the old frames with different parts years after!
The records of the majority of the smaller companies no longer exist: you’d be surprised how fast the entire history of a company disappears once the factory closes. There were also a lot of ‘dodgy practices’ within the bicycle trade, with companies regularly liquidating and starting up again and spurious production claims often made for advertising purposes and to inflate a company’s worth. Few published their true production figures. It’s a nightmare trying to make sense of it a hundred years later.
A catalogue description is a good guide, though we rarely have a manufacturer’s catalogue for every year, so may not know for how many years a model was current. Also, though we now consider a catalogue description to be an accurate guide to a bicycle’s specification, despite the catalogue options listed a customer could choose any option whatsoever, even components sold by a competing company.
It’s possible to date Sturmey-Archer hubs, so if the rear hub is original to the bike that often helps.
Bear in mind that owners often updated their bicycles over the years; though we might like our bike to match its catalogue description, updated parts are also a valid part of its history and provenance.
Details of the following manufacturers have been published, so I hope this page can provide an easy reference point. I’ll add to it as I find more.
RALEIGH FRAME NUMBER DATING
MY NOTES:
1.The Raleigh Heron Head transfer was introduced in 1908. In the same year, mudguards received a forward extension.
2. Raleigh’s ‘R’ lamp bracket was superseded in September 1927 by the heron lamp bracket (see below). The company had been taking steps to make it harder for makers of cheap bicycles to copy Raleigh parts. The ‘R’ bracket was easy to copy, so they introduced this more complex lamp bracket instead.
Consult the list below to help remember when these companies were still ‘original’ before being taken over by Raleigh:
Humber 1932
Triumph 1932
Rudge-Whitworth 1943
Three Spires 1954
BSA , New Hudson, Sunbeam 1957
Phillips 1960
Hercules 1960
Norman 1960
Sun 1960
Carlton 1960
RUDGE-WHITWORTH FRAME NUMBER DATING
Production has been attributed as follows, with frame numbers as at 31 July each year:
1898, 70,000;
1900, 118,200;
1901, 140,754;
1902, 169,739;
1903, 210,950;
1904, 223,672;
1905, 272,991;
1906, 350,235;
1907, 427,114;
1908, 488,139;
1909, 538,390;
Quick easy ftp server professional version 3.2 crack. 1910, 585,010;
1911, 626,400;
1912, 663,066;
1913, 697,524;
1914, 726,731;
1915, 740,862;
1916, 745,621;
1917, 749,192;
1918, 751,213;
1919, 755,622.
SUNBEAM FRAME NUMBER DATING
1909 = 96,739 (declared)
1910 = 101,700 (calculated)
1911 = 106,700 (calculated)
1912 = 111,642 (declared)
PREMIER FRAME NUMBER DATING
BEESTON HUMBER FRAME NUMBER DATING
ELSWICK HOPPER FRAME NUMBER DATING
SINGER
The following dated bicycle frame numbers from the Singer Car Club (not guaranteed):
1903 – 142069
1903 – 172676
1905 – 184483
1908 – 225451
1909 – 232178
TRIUMPH
I started to collate frame numbers from 1890s-1920 Triumph bicycles, and will update it as I go along. You can see it at the new Triumph Bicycle Museum
GERMAN NSU BICYCLES
(translated from German)
There’s no definite official information about part numbers and corresponding registration years. This data is approximate. With an accuracy of + / – one years, but they are assumed to be relatively safe.
1900 ~ 7000
1910 ~ 18,000
1925 ~ 550,000
1929 ~ 675,000
1930 ~ 685,000
1931 ~ 692,000
1932 ~ 700,000
1933 ~ 720,000
1934 ~ 770,000
1935 ~ 920,000
1936 ~ 1,000,000
1910 ~ 18,000
1925 ~ 550,000
1929 ~ 675,000
1930 ~ 685,000
1931 ~ 692,000
1932 ~ 700,000
1933 ~ 720,000
1934 ~ 770,000
1935 ~ 920,000
1936 ~ 1,000,000
1937 ~ 1.200.000
1938 ~ 1,300,000
1939 ~ 1,450,000
1940 ~ 1,550,000
1941 ~ 1,650,000
1942 ~ 1,700,000
1943 ~ 1,750,000
1944 ~ 1,800,000
1940 ~ 1,550,000
1941 ~ 1,650,000
1942 ~ 1,700,000
1943 ~ 1,750,000
1944 ~ 1,800,000
1945 ~ 1,806,000
1946 Renumbered: Prewar numbers re-used. For example, 800,000 might be 1935 or 1956.
1947 ~ 55,000
1948 ~ 100,000
1949 ~ 175,000
1950 ~ 320,000
1951 ~ 420,000
1952 ~ 570,000
1953 ~ 650,000
1954 ~ 700,000
1955 ~ 750,000
1956 ~ 800,000
1957 ~ 900.000 to about 990.000
1947 ~ 55,000
1948 ~ 100,000
1949 ~ 175,000
1950 ~ 320,000
1951 ~ 420,000
1952 ~ 570,000
1953 ~ 650,000
1954 ~ 700,000
1955 ~ 750,000
1956 ~ 800,000
1957 ~ 900.000 to about 990.000
From 1957 / 990,000 Onwards: NSU used the same numbers as prewar again, so it’s confusing.
DATING FROM TORPEDO REAR HUBS
The best bet on post-1957 machines is to check the Torpedo rear wheel hubs. Since around 1920 they used a production stamp, with which they can be dated:
“36”, therefore stands for example for the production date in 1936; later, there were also some 1-digit numbers:
“5” or “55”, built in 1955
“6” or “56”, Built in 1956
“7”, built 1957
In 1958 there were also letters:
“A”, built in 1958
“B”, built in 1959
“C”, built in 1960
“D”, built in 1961
“5” or “55”, built in 1955
“6” or “56”, Built in 1956
“7”, built 1957
In 1958 there were also letters:
“A”, built in 1958
“B”, built in 1959
“C”, built in 1960
“D”, built in 1961
“E”, built in 1962
(Front hubs do not have date indicators)
STURMEY ARCHER DATING GUIDE
If you want further details of Sturmey Archer hubs, buy the superb book The Sturmey Archer Story by Tony Hadland, available through the V-CC.
THE INTRODUCTION OF CHROME: 1930
The cycle industry was an early adopter of the new chrome process, and chrome was first used on bicycles in 1928.
Maurice Selbach is believed to have been the first British manufacturer to have used it in 1928 (see extract from his 1929 catalogue, below)
Shelby was one of the first US manufacturers to use chrome; their 1928 ‘Lindy’ model had a mixture of chrome and nickel.
It was offered as an option in 1930 by various British manufacturers (see extract from 1930 Raleigh catalogue, below) and by BSA in 1931 (I don’t have a copy of the BSA 1930 catalogue to check). Catalogues were generally printed the year before the season indicated in a catalogue. By 1933 it had become widely used.
If you want to date a vintage bicycle and it has chrome parts, it is generally accepted that it would have been made from 1930 onwards, or updated if made earlier.
WHEEL RIM DIMENSIONS
Here’s a handy 1911 reference guide for the rim dimensions on 26″ and 28″ wheels, both wired-edge and beaded-edge.
I’ve also reproduced the following wheel and tyre guides on the tyre page, but it may be useful to have all this reference stuff on one page.
MODERN TYRE SIZES
Bicycle tyre sizes are so confusing! Vintage motorcycle tyres are logical, those for cycles are not. Here’s a chart to help…
Hercules Gas Engines Serial Numbers
Some time ago, I asked John and Sue Middleton why they sold their wonderful bicycle museum in Camelford, Cornwall. They explained they’d always been upset that they received little support from fellow enthusiasts or vintage cycle clubs. But the turning point was apparently an incident when a visitor parked his car right in front of the entrance, and a big argument ensued when John tried to get him to move it. The driver insisted he had the right to park wherever he liked. I suppose ‘the great British public’ is an animal best avoided if you don’t have a thick skin, because statistically you’re eventually going to meet every sort of person in such circumstances.
Huffy Bicycle Serial Numbers
I belong to many vintage clubs, but I refuse to have anything to do with their politics. Hobbyists, by definition, are eccentric (myself included): put more than one in a room together and the outcome is unpredictable. I support clubs because they help our hobby. I have wonderful friends within the hobby. I keep the two separate. I actually do spend an inordinate amount of time answering emails and phonecalls regarding obscure anomalies of our cycling and motorcycle history (I’m also a Veteran Motorcycle Club marque specialist). The questions I respond to are generally tricky ones that can’t be easily answered by the V-CC, those from fellow enthusiasts who have a similar machine to one of my own, and folks who need help with stuff left to them from enthusiast dads who have passed away. But, like other volunteers, there’s only so much time in the day to dedicate to our hobbies, and as much as I love vintage vehicles, I also have a fabulous life outside the hobby that takes priority. Good luck researching your bicycle …and I hope you continue to enjoy these websites ?
Hercules Bike Serial Numbers
NSU DATING thanks to – http://www.fahrrad.nsu24.de