I know there are alot of hardcore collectors on here. Guys who know all about serial numbers, production runs, etc. So I'm curious to know if there is anyone here who has the "last" Haro Master/Sport, GT Pro Freestyle Tour, RL-20II, Hutch Trick Star (which would be 87' for these) etc, made in 89? I think it would be cool to see the last ones that were made in the 80's.

All serial numbers of the bikes you listed, do not show production dates, only model year. There would be no way to know.

It's a neat thought, but I had the same question. How would you know?

Even if you knew that sequentially you had a later produced frame for that year, how could you know someone else didn't have a later one? Unless the manufacturer published what the last serial number for each model was we'd never know.

Still, for some others we might be able to get a rough idea, or maybe even exact. Maybe by the end of the 80's they changed them, but I know my GT Pro Performer's number is 8850088. Meaning it was made in August (the first 8), 1985 (the 2nd 2 numbers), and the 88th frame made that month. So we could figure out at least the last one made in 85 if we wanted. Like if someone has 12851234, or whatever. You get the idea, and of course a bike being made then would be an 86 model I'd bet, but if no one had any higher than 1234, we'd still know that that's the last one we know of that was made in 85. I'd rather have the first than the last, still an interesting idea though. I'm happy with my 88th one made in 85.

Yea, I thought it would've been a cool idea to see the very last bike made from each major company from such a great era. I thought that maybe some of the hardcore collectors might have info on what the last serial numbers would've been. Or that there was some type of info out there on the last production runs. Sort of like automobiles.

Yeah, I've never looked into them myself really, but I remember some guys posting sometime over the years that they're talked to people at certain companies and they always seem to get the same answers. Like they don't have records from back then, etc. Except JMC. I heard Jim Melton has great records of everything, like give him a serial number and he can even tell you the original color the frame was. Again that's just something I think I remember reading at one time or another. Cool idea, but I'm not sure there's any way to prove how many were ever made.

The BB tube is the most common tube of ALL the bike frame of that company, they would be all the same for all the models. So, they would not be making BB tubes for each model. Even with stamped drop out plates, they are not going to make one for every model, unless that model had a special design. That is why the model names are not identifiable in the serial numbers.

Going by how machine shops work, the tubing is created in bulk and brought together by the welder as he is welding them together. So, there might be a full bin of BB tubes that would be out of order, or a BB tube that never gets used because they keep add to the bin, etc. They are not built on an assembly line like a car.

Also, to show this could be true, I have a survivor Black/Gray 1988 color scheme VERY rare RL-20A. Some of you might know, that the RL-20A was not suppose to have ever came in that color, and the official cutoff year for the the RL-20A was late 1987. And guess what the serial number was??? R86###### It's not even close.

another thing regarding serials is that in a typical number with the "M/Y/production #" format, the production # is usually not unique to a particular model (or even brand, depending on the factory). it's usually the production count for everything they built that month.

Now I know. I figured they were stamped after they were welded. I guess It'd be a little hard to stamp a dropout that way though, now that I think about it.

Yeah, it is afterward.....look at this.....

Lol, that's funny.

The guy I bought my yellow 99 Quadangle from swore up and down that it was "the last one to leave SE Racing".
Kind of a rare bike with a chrome Landing Gear fork and cantilever brakes, but others are out there too.
As for the serial number, others are out there with higher numbers, like others have said.
Lots of stuff went on that was not available to the public.
Travis Turreson had a couple of one off bikes a, Quadangle with a floval top tube, custom sized PK's.
I spoke with Sal Correa from SE Racing in June about some of this topic and he basically agreed with everything that has been discussed here.

they were blowing those yellow quads out for next to nothing. we bought some literally a day or 2 before SE phone was disconnected.

Alot of great info! Things I never even thought of before. It still would've been nice though to be able to have better documentation/history of these bikes. As far as the serial numbers/production runs go. But at least we still have "visual" documentation right!

You have to think too......why would a manufacture of anything, want to make sure people could some day later, know what was made when.

That only happens when things are purposely numbered for that reason - and old school 80's bikes were not being produced for any such reason like that.

I bought one of Torkers last "real" frames ever made, the Aluminum Pro ST for I think it was 2001. It was actually the frames that were kept aside for warranty replacements if some turned theirs in for warranty. So, this was actually a first production, not a last production.

I still have it, as a complete that I built.

Mike Devitt, former owner of SE Racing told me that when Race Inc was building the PK Rippers, they would have boxes of pre-stamped dropouts with date codes. The welder would just reach in and pull out a dropout to weld up. There was no thought to sequentially ordering them. There would always be extras and they used everything so the date codes were a ball park guess for when the bike as built, accurate to within a few months.

Same went for Mongoose, they pre-stamped the bottom bracket shells by the hundreds.