Hi. I recently bought this frame and components at a local yard sale in New Jersey. What I now know as the Tommy-bar on the stem struck me. I was extremely surprised to discover that this is a WW II Airborne Paratrooper folding bike!

It is from about 3/4 into the production run (serial # is in the low 50, 000s).

My two questions are:

Is there a way to figure out the exact year this bike was manufactured from the serial #?

Is it possible that the cranks and pedals are from an earlier version of the BSA folding bike? I noticed the pedals are not the spindle-only type, however, mine do look like the pedals some has on their BSA WWI folding bike.

Thanks for the help.

Click to enlarge the picture