And the Schwinn’s just keep rollin’ through. This is Jim B’s cherry ’83 World Sport.
A local bike shop was running a “Cash-For-Clunkers” program of their own and I answered a Craigslist ad they had posted to try to get rid of some of the clunkers. This World Sport was standing alone and it caught my eye immediately. I looked at the other bikes and saw nothing that was better and asked “how much for the blue Schwinn”? The owner of the shop answered; “gimmie 50 bucks” and I walked out of there 10 minutes later with this gem. The bike soon became an obsession and I spent the next couple weeks cleaning, polishing, lubing, tuning, truing and fixing. I had to replace the 5 speed freewheel because it was cracked. I had a 6 speed laying around that I took off a 1985 World Sport that I am converting to a fixie and it worked fine on this bike since it has non-indexed, friction type shifters. It now rolls down the road as it did 26 years ago, maybe better. The ride of the all steel frame and fork is simply fantastic. I have many bikes, of all types including a 2008 Trek Portland, which is superb and I seem to gravitate to the World Sport more than I care to admit. In my humble opinion, the classic all steel framed road bikes of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s are without equal today. They are all purpose machines that have been disregarded and disrespected for far too long.
Thanks Jim