Sears roebuck free spirit bicycle serial numbers lookup

Sears Roebuck Free Spirit Bicycle Serial Numbers Explained

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Sears Roebuck Cruiser Mans Bicycle Built by Puch/ Austria Gender: Men Bike: Sears Roebuck Name: Manufacture Puch Size: 26” Speeds: 5 Speeds Color: Green Serial Number: 2886083/ 503.473640 Year: 1968 Breaks: Front and Rear Hand This bike has been gone thru and tuned or repaired as needed.

Ok, well it is my friends bike but still. My friend has this 3 speed Sears Free Spirit Women's Mitxe Size Medium bicycle that she received as a gift, and we would like to know in what year it was made. Sears Roebuck and Co. Has been offering various forms of two-wheeled motor vehicles in their stores and catalogs throughout the 20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s, Sears sold many rebadged motorcycle, moped, and scooter models produced by manufacturers including Cushman, Piaggio, Gilera, Puch, Yardman and others.

Legendary Western Flyer bicycle fitted with Free Spirit engine. Free Spirit is Tanaka bicycle engine, sold by Sears (an American chain of department stores founded by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck in the late 19th century. Once mail order company, now web-based). Tanaka engines were marketed under the names: Bike Bug, Aqua Bug, Tas Spitz, Sears Free Spirit, and Little Devil. They were very popular from the '60s through the '70s. Sears still keeps some parts to this engine in its web catalogue.

Tanaka company and Free Spirit engine

Tanaka has a long history of manufacturing engines and motor parts. Their specialty is the forming and casting of high quality, industrial rated engine components. First started in 1917, Tanaka produced recreational equipment long before they manufactured power equipment. In the 1940s Tanaka introduced the 'BK-3 Featherweight' bicycle motor in Japan, a predecessor to the Bike-Bug model.

Tanaka really came into their own in North America in the 1960's. At this time they manufactured engines, power equipment, and mini-bike components. In the mid 1960's Tanaka produced and supplied small motorcycle and moped engines to a number of companies. In the late 1960's there was an ambitious young sales representative by the name of Bob Thomson, who convinced Simpson Sears (Sears of Canada) to carry the small outboard motor manufactured by Tanaka. In 1975, Sears began to carry a variety of Tanaka's motor products including the Free-Spirit bicycle engine. Shortly thereafter these products were expanded to Sears Roebuck and the Free-Spirit motorizing kit was introduced to the U.S. market.

In the late seventies Tanaka supplied boat motors, small generators, pumps, and of course bicycle motors to Aquabug International, a small distributor out of New York State. The bicycle motors from Aquabug were sold under the 'Bike-Bug' name. Tanaka's products were all are based on the same 23cc motor, just with a different housing for whatever the intended purpose. In 1983, Aquabug International was experiencing financial troubles. Tanaka acquired the company, dropped the names 'Aquabug' and 'bike-Bug', and continued production of the bike motors under their own brand name 'Tas Spitz'. 'Tas' is the name Tanaka had been using on their recreational vehicle motors since the sixties: minibike, motorcycle, and moped engines. Production was stopped in mid- eighties when the market for this products fell out.

Many people ask if there was a real 'J.C. Higgins' who worked for Sears. There certainly was. John Higgins began working for Sears in 1898 as the manager of the headquarters' office bookkeepers and retired as company comptroller in 1930.

'John Higgins' the employee became 'J.C. Higgins' the brand name during a discussion in 1908 among Sears' executives of possible names for a new line of sporting goods. At this point, the story gets a bit murky, but Higgins' name was suggested and John Higgins consented to Sears use his name. Since he did not have a middle initial, Sears added the 'C.'

In 1908, the Western Sporting Goods Company in Chicago began putting J.C. Higgins on baseballs and baseball gloves sold in Sears catalogs. By 1910, the J.C. Higgins trademark was extended to cover footballs and basketballs. Later, the popularity of the Higgins brand—combined with the wider participation of American youth in sports—led Sears to place tennis equipment, soccer balls, volleyballs, boxing equipment and baseball uniforms in the J.C. Higgins line.

By the 1940s, J.C. Higgins represented all Sears fishing, boating and camping equipment. After the Second World War, Sears consolidated all sporting goods under the J.C. Higgins brand name and added it to a line of luggage.

Sears Roebuck Free Spirit Bicycle Serial Numbers Explained

The J.C. Higgins brand disappeared shortly after Sears introduced the Ted Williams brand of sporting and recreation goods in 1961.