Forks, shifters, or frames may provide hints but have a lot of gray areas too.

Specific bicycle parts can provide you a clue in identifying model details like name and date of manufacture.

Identify bike by serial number and use it to search through a list of bicycle brands.

Another way is to look up online and offline resources like bike catalogs or manuals.

The first digits of the serial number specify the manufacturing year and month, and the rest indicates a unique ID.

The most common and direct starting point is to find the bike serial number.

Kodak did the same thing for its lenses and camera bodies for a while too, using CAMEROSITY as the code word. 'VHPICTURES' (For 'Victor Hasselblad Pictures') translates to 1234567890.

The Hasselblad camera company uses that scheme for the date codes on its cameras and film magazines, too. Not really 'secure' in any meaningful sense of the word, but it was good enough for training flights.

GlennWe did something similar in the Navy when we wanted to broadcast coordinates over the radio but couldn't use an encrypted channel - We'd use a ten-letter word with no repeated letters, with each letter representing 1 through 0. This allowed us to negotiate on various items within certain limits. So if our cost on some item was $195, our cost would be coded as DZB on the tag. Our cost on a particular item was written as 'Don't be lazy', corresponding to 1 through zero, respectively. Makes sense.I worked at furniture store a hundred years ago when I was a kid and all the prices were hand marked on a hang-tag. So if 'R' = 2021, what letters represent other years? Interestingly, the actual model information doesn't appear to be encoded anywhere in the serial number.Good info, thanks. So a serial number of WTU060QU0110R would represent a 2021 model year bike that was the 110th bike made in the 'QU' factory on the 60th day of the year. Interestingly, the actual model information doesn't appear to be encoded anywhere in the serial number. The rep said that the first three digits after the 'WTU' represent the production day (so '045' would be the 45th day of the year), the two letters in the middle represent the manufacturing plant code, the next four numbers represent the bike's position in that day's production run, and the final letter represents the model year (mine turned out to be a 2021 model year). UPDATE: I called again and got a much shorter estimated wait time so I stuck it out. And my LBS where I bought the bike has actually stopped answering the phones entirely - they're using every warm body in the shop to either work on bikes or deal with the line of customers outside. I tried that first, but got an expected wait time of almost three hours, with no callback option.

Trek bike database serial number