hello!
so i have this schwinn collegiate (not sure what year, but would love to know!) that i have been trying to fix up for the past few months. i discovered the bike in my paretns new house. it was left behind (from the looks of it when i found it..for maybe 20-30 years..never moved from the very spot. so i took it out, cleaned it off (still trying to get all the dang rust off!) and now my lastest problem is the gears. last weekend i took it into the city for a spin. coming back over the manhatten bridge, the chan fell off...not thinking too much of it, i put it back on. from the bottom of manhatten, all the way to grand central, everytime i stopped, or slowed down..DUNK the chain would fall off! when i got it home, i did a deep clean to the bike, and flipped it over to see if i could make sense of whats been going on...and i have no clue. i greased up the chain and spun it upside down for a while, and that seemed to help wth the creaking, and all. so this morning i took it out for a spin, and now it doenst seem to be falling off anymore (the chain) but the new problem...is that it wont go into first gear anymore! i flip it into first, and it just stays in second! and if i try to put the chain manually on first when the gear is in first...it flips right back down to second! here are some pictures so you can get an idea of the bike, and some close ups of the chain...
any help would be amazing.

thanks!

cool!!! i like old bike!! but sorry i cant help coz if im not see myself and try fix it i cant tell u whats wrong (and my english is bad) but i think u should loose the chain and re asembled again, coz look like stuck in second gear

You would probably need to either tension or loosen the chain by sliding the rear axle back and forth in the dropout (can't do it if it has a vertical dropout like mountain bikes have) or just buy a chain breaker, take the chain off, and go out and buy a new one. I am assuming this bike has never had the chain replaced before, and chains stretch after a while. I am sort of restoring an old BMX that I found in a junk pile, this would be about 20 years old and the chain had stretched heaps. Ask on the chopperbicycle.net forum, there are a bunch of great guys there that would certainly be able to help

I have one real simliar to yours and is old. The only difference I see from yours and mine are that my handle bars sit higher, and much rather have yours.

If your chain keeps falling off, then get a chain breaker, remove a few links to shorten it, and reassemble.

Secondly, if you want to find out the year of the bike, and some of it's additional history, like which store it may have came from and what city, then look around on the bike. More than likely, it would be seen more easily if you flip the bike up side down. On most bikes, the serial# would be located on the underside of the crank hub, the part where the crank and pedals are joined with the bike frame.

I'm restoring an old Dyno, Mongoose, GT when I use to race bikes 15 years ago. I'm into racing cars now but love to restore anything if given a chance.

PS- I bet your Schwinn emblem up front is still in mint condition and shiny. They never seen to rust.