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And Just When You Thought.......
that I wouldn't ever come up with more headscratchers.......here's another poor misused vintage CCM. Any thoughts/suggestions/clues as to model year and model would be greatly appreciated. Just a thought but with that yellow paint and those "industrial" double bars, could this bike have belonged to the RCAF during WWII ?? The painted a LOT of their equipment this shade of yellow for visibility reasons.....including the planes used in the Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
BTW, this bike and the follow-on Cadet both belong to a buddy of mine who delights in finding/buying ancient iron rejected by a lot of people nowadays but especially Canadian-made bikes.
This is one of the 1940-1941 Motorbike models. The serial number indicates 1940 manufacture but it could be a 1941 model manufactured late in the calendar year. CCM applied the Motorbike moniker to models with double top tubes, as this was a common feature of early Motorcycles. Other motorcycle influenced features are long handlebars with cross brace and the truss rods on the forks.
CCM manufactured several Motorbike variants. Normally, one would be able to identify it via the crankset but this one is a bit of a mish-mash. The chainring itself is that used on the Crown budget brand marketed by CCM, however, it was typically used with cottered crankarms. The single piece crankarm is typical of the Rambler brand of the era, which was positioned between CCM and Crown. Yet, it has the Gibson pedals which were generally paired with the Triplex crankset on the premium brands (CCM, Cleveland, Columbia, Massey, Perfect and Red Bird). The rims are chrome. which would be typical of the premium brands. The budget brands were normally outfitted with enamelled rims during this era. Still, wheels, crankarms and pedals are all easily replaced, so it's hard to determine the original configuration and branding, without a head badge. It could even be some marketing brand that was contract manufactured by CCM for one of the numerous department or hardware chain stores. About the only variant that we can rule out is the Cadet Motorbike, as they employed the small diameter bottom bracket shells.