![]() ![]() The longer the front fork was, the easier it was to ride a wheelie. Chopper handle bars and fat ass rear tires on a widened rear end. The cops would actually hassle us because the bikes were so crazy looking. We would chop our front forks, the longer the better. We also took 10 speeds and chopped them with 20 inch front tires. The rest were pretty easy to kill though. The weight of the Schwinns was both a hindrance, and a blessing. Born to be Wild wasn’t just a song, it was a way of life in my hood. Think a gang of 20 kids and a Mad Max mentality in the late 1960s. Because we would treat bikes like rented mules, and beat the crap out of them. My chopper is just too much fun, and so many people in my neighborhood appreciate it.Īctually rode every one of the bikes here back in the day. I decided to take the Mustang out for a final run before it enters storage.Īfter that ride, I took the new bike back to the store. ![]() Over rough terrain the pedals will hit ground and you have to be aware of pedal position on curves. With more than a foot of stretch the steering feels a bit wonky and the bike is certainly top speed limited due to stability. (Offset to one side of course for safety.)įinally, I found I was geared too high to ride beside a young child, so I swapped the 50 tooth sprocket for a 32. It has a rear hub mounted 3 speed with a Shimano grip shift, which I would love to change to a suicide shift. I polished the wheels, added new whitewalls, pedals etc, and switched the damaged front fork with a bent springer that I shipped from California. This late Mustang has that iconic frame design, so I decided to reignite my teenage dream, as I had this broken bike laying around and my kid was getting old enough to ride. I was a big fan of the lowrider bikes in the 90s, which were always based around a Schwinn Crate style frame. I currently have the last iteration, which came out around 2000. It had several generations, starting in the 60s I believe. There was a Canadian counterpart to these chopper bikes, the CCM Mustang. Schwinn ceased producing wheelie bikes after 1982, while Raleigh held for another two years before throwing in the towel. The crossbar-mounted gear levers were, well, not good for young private parts in an accident, especially when the knob inevitably came off of the selector and turned it into a dagger (these were actually banned on new Choppers sold after 1974 in the US). With their tall center of gravity, these bikes were inherently unstable, hard to ride long distances, and the banana seats encouraged passengers to ride. BMX-style bicycles were coming into favor with buyers, and consumer safety groups were more than happy to see Choppers go away. However, by the time I lusted after these things, the death of wheelie bikes was already imminent. The Chopper saved the Raleigh firm and was a massive success in the UK and across the pond. Look at that console!! As a ten-year-old I would have tricked out that metallic surface with one of those stick-on LCD clocks, a thermometer, and maybe a compass for full instrumentation. Note the gear indicator window behind the giant shift knob (there were also 5-speed models as well as those with tandem gear selectors for models with gearsets in the back and on the crank). My favorite feature of the Chopper was the gear selector that made it seem like this bicycle was actually a car, which is what we as elementary schoolers really wanted anyway. Ogle’s Tom Karen (or Alan Oakley, if believe his side of the story) got the proportions and angular styling perfect in what appears to be a bicycle equivalent of Ogle’s funky Bond Bug car design. ![]() Still, there was something just right about the British Raleigh Chopper that came late to the party in 1969, and it was always my favorite. or the Huffy Slingshot with a Hurst branded shifter like on your dad’s 442 might have had. Outlandish interpretations existed such as Murray’s Fire Cat. By the later ’60s, the “muscle bike” style accounted for up to seventy-five percent of all bicycle sales, with competitors from most major bike brands (and rebranded ones sold in department stores such as Sears and JCPenney’s when they were still a thing). Parents were apparently hesitant to buy such odd machines for their kids, but eventually, they appeared all over the neighborhood streets. The Schwinn Sting Ray debuted in 1963 as a response to a California trend of fitting motorcycle-style accouterments to bicycles such as long “banana” seats, tall “ape hanger” handlebars, and small diameter wheels (often with the rear a larger size). The Raleigh Chopper actually wasn’t the first wheelie bike. Honestly, anything that involves Dennis Hopper doesn’t sound much like something to influence children’s playthings, but then I never thought Vampire films like The Hunger would ever transmogrify into tween drivel like the “Twilight” series. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |