• Mark D

    Love the color of those coffee-colored beauties (or are they chocolate?) Glad you could rescue them.

    If those are Chicago-made “Electro-Forged” (welded) frames, and I’m pretty sure they are, they should be fairly easy to date. The Chicago serial numbers consist of a letter representing the month of manufacture (A=January, B=February, etc.), a number indicating the last digit of the year (1960 – 1964; 0=1960, 1=1961, etc.) or a letter indicating the year (1965 – 1979; A=1965, B=1966, etc.), and a sequential series of five or six digits. So, A367584 would be January 1963 and CB77584 would be March 1966. If letters were used for date codes, they skipped the letters “I” and “O” as they looked too much like numbers.

    Happy hunting.

  • older1

    Omygosh! Now Hubie, you have GOT to be kidding me!
    Oh, RIGHT, for a minute there, you had me going. Ha-ha, you got me: I thought I read: “out to the curb”, boy, I sure fell for that one.
    Come on, you can tell us what really happened. You actually bought these for $375 each off of a collector from somewhere like Akron, Ohio, right? Right? No? I’m wrong?
    Alright, all kidding aside, wow, that’s amazing, and what a beautiful job you’ve done cleaning them up! They look like new! Wow. Oops, there I go repeating myself again, aren’t I! Nice bikes, Hubie!

  • Hubie G

    I think they call it Sierra brown, and I dated it to 1975, but I think they had dropped the alpha phone numbers, I suspect they had a lot of bike shop stickers laying around so used them.

    • Mark D

      When I first read your post, for some reason I thought it said, “She had no idea what YEAR this was.” Hence, the dating info, which, if I had looked more closely at your title, I might have surmised you didn’t need. Anyway, someone else might find it useful.

      As for the phone number, using letters, and even words, was a common mnemonic practice for many years. Does the sticker have a town listed?

      As for overhauling them again in 35 years, hopefully it will still be you! 🙂

      • Hubie G

        The sticker is from Mikes Bike Shop, Palatine IL, the store has moved but it is still in Palatine today.

  • Hubie G

    Thanks for the kind words on the cleanup! I enjoy doing it and hope someone else will do the same in 35 years and keep them going

    • older1

      Good thing you enjoy it, Hubie, because if not, it would be a real chore to get a bike looking that good!
      Hopefully, we can still buy 27″ tires for our projects in 35 years!