Road frame identification by serial number?

Question

I have an older road frame (probably 20-30 years old) that was repainted before I bought it.

It's probably mid-line quality, lugged, double butted steel, where the head lugs, fork crown and frame and fork ends are chromed, but the frame and fork ends are likely stamped from steel plate.

The Serial number starts and ends with a "star" stamp. The original wheel size was 27". Trying to determine BB & HS thread, I think BSA. Its not stamped on the fixed cup, and honestly I've never had to replace it or the Headset (campagnolo) in the 10 years I've had it. Serial number is *2110191*, that's "star"2110191"star". Can anyone shed some light?

Answer 1

Wow. This one had me going to my shop to inspect some bikes. I found 3 (actually 4) brands of bikes that have stars on either side of the serial number.

Are you sure the bike has butted tubes? Kind of hard to tell from the outside, and it could just be hearsay. Does the rear dropout have a derailleur hanger on it? Does it have waterbottle mounts or braze ons for shifters? Does it have braze ons for cable guides? Have you tried to spin on a BSC crown nut on the fork?

The first 2 are Lambert and Viscount from England. These are really the same bikes but had a name change when the company traded hands. These are fillet brazed so would not fit in your "lugged" category. They also had some lugged bikes in their lineup but couldn't be considered midrange.

The next one is a Kabuki.... predecessor to Bridgestone. This brand very well could have had chrome ends. A dead giveaway are the lugs. These bikes actually had big clunky connections which were actually cast AROUND the tubes instead of being brazed. C. Itoh, the brand that preceeded Kabuki, "perfected" this way of joining tubes.

The final one- and probably most likely- is a vintage Fuji. Perhaps a Newest or a Finest.

In the case of all of these bikes, BSC (British Standards Cycle) would have been the threading as opposed to BSA (British Standards Auto).

What perplexes me is that all of these bikes have at least one letter in the serial number, preceeding the numbers but between the stars. This would lend to two more possibilities which are the bike was from a small builder or from a mass market builder like Huffy or Murray... they actually did make some good bikes in the day.

One more thing (tired of typing). I would take the fixed cup out of the frame and try and install a BSC cup. Keep in mind that French threading is OPPOSITE what a BSC is on the fixed side (although the adjustable side might fit, but badly) and a BSC cup won't fit in a BSA or Italian bottom bracket at all. Just for historical sake, the top end Lamberts and Viscounts had pressed in bottom brackets. Shocking but true.