Sure is! We would scavenge those sweet old Campy parts from my buddies dad to lighten up our BMX bikes back in the day. Beautiful.
Some of the BMX heads might know what this is, I recently pulled this out of my dad's attic, it was my very last BMX bike which we purchased part by part together, 50/50 back in the late 70's early 80's. He would help buy any part as long as I paid half out of my own pocket. Needless to say, it didn't get raced for more than a few months as I got my licence and she just hung in the garage collecting dust from then on. For shits and grins I checked on eBay, these old 80's BMX bikes are pulling huge coin. :eek1 I'll have to snap some pictures of the rest but... Very early serial numbered 1979 JMC Long Standard and first year fork. Bullseye Euro BB.
Bridgestone, Joe Bell paint. 48cm. Need to sell but can't...part..with...it. Speedster, bastardized properly by a kid and his dad. Long gone. Cantilever frame something-or-other springer with some BMX parts. One of these days that'll get some attention.
Recently picked up a Speedster style frame (old Varsity) for $10 with the intentions of building a 26" BMX cruiser. Also couldn't pass up the bent framed Sprint behind it for another $10. I could turn that into a hipsters wet dream. Love the BMX Cruiser with the springer.
Awesome Thread! I'll ALWAYS lust after my older cousins' Apple crate with the 5 speed shifter on the top tube My parents gave me an AMF Roadmaster pos for Christmas, but at least it was a bike and it meant freedom! My other friends had sting rays and my Roadmaster scraped on the chain guard with every downpedal of my right foot! Never got the applecrate and no idea what happened to my cousin's.
You hit the nail on the head man. Since I can remember and too this day, freedom has always been my deep rooted connection with bikes. As a youngster in the summertime, with the only prerequisite that we be home for dinner, I couldn't eat breakfast fast enough to get the hell out of the house and roll. See you guys at 5:30 when pops pulls up from work. It instilled great navigation skills and a keen sense of surroundings (while still fun, traveling in the completely wrong direction for miles will do that to a 9 year old and his buddies, WTF did we just do ), ingenious roadside bike repair skills, a desire to explore, and most of all a heightened sense of camaraderie amongst my mates. If my parents had any idea the travels we did at such a young age they would have shyte themselves. My first cobbled together Schwinn with paper route money, post a bunch of less than desirable Huffy's and Murray's of which my folks could afford, circa 1974.
Gah..... LOVE this frame! I was racing right around that time too and still have my nearly intact Hutch Pro Racer in the garage. Trying to post pics but Photobucket is giving me fits. Will try again later.....
There was no intent to adhere to any purity laws regarding restoration on this bad boy, just wanted to bring a cool old rig back from the dead and get some use out of it as my commuter/bar bike. I didn't take any before pictures, but this was a $100 CL find, then added some goodies and some TLC:
Seriously???? I'm gonna have to follow you around and see where you're garage saling at! :huhAll I ever find are Walmart specials and 20year old Trek's that people think are priceless just because they say "Trek" on the downtube. Great finds!
Very cool! I have a Fuji Espree from around 1980 that looks a lot like that. I'll try to rustle up some pics of that too. Love that bike.
Here's my Hutch Pro Racer. Original owner and raced for a long time. A little rough around the edges but not in terrible shape for a 32 year old bike!
Great ride, I always wanted a Hutch. Loved the super wide pro bars and who can forget the bear trap pedals. Hard to tell from the picture but it looks like you have a nice parts group as well, CW bars, Mongoose Pro Class rims, GT laid back post. Are those Profile cranks? Not that I would ever get rid of it but our rides/parts are demanding some crazy high prices. We have the same truck as well.
Those are the Redline 401 cranks... Well one of them anyway! I wanted to replace the missing one but the vintage ones go for stupid money. And yes, so far I've avoided the temptation of selling but I'm not sure how long I can hold out.:eek1 I literally mowed every lawn in sight to build that bike up.... Funny about the truck. Love that thing!
I love the myth that Schwinn ignored the MTB craze. They were one of the first big companies to recognize 'something' was happening that had potential outside Marin County. Taking a cue from the early Klunker riders there were bikes like the cruiser framed Spitfire 5 and Klunker 5 (bikes touted by Outside/Mariah magazine as the best start for a reasonably priced off road machine at a time when Fisher/Kelly, Breeze, Cove Bike Shop, etc, were still calling their bikes 'custom klunkers', not yet 'mountain bikes'). The Sidewinder (1981), the Sierra (1983), the Giant Bicycles produced High Sierra (debuting in the winter of '83 for the '84 model year, arguably the first sub-500 dollar mtb worth owning), the (partially) fillet-brazed Cimarron. All of these bikes were early mass produced entrants, and showed that Schwinn understood the market was to be truly driven by popularly priced bikes, not NorCal one-offs. The first bona fide mountain bike racing star- Ned Overend, started out with Schwinn, first as an upstart 'privateer' on his own $350 '84 High Sierra, and then on a factory sponsored custom. Yes, the 'real' Schwinn went away, not from "ignoring MTBs" but from the reluctance of the management 'old guard' to abandon it's traditional Chicago offerings. The likely coffin nail being the unionization of the Chicago factory- the most inefficiently crafted models, plummeting in popularity, from an obsolete facility, were now far and away the most expensive to produce, sapping the profits from popular imported models, dragging down manufacturer and dealer alike. Even after the demise of 'Chicago HQ Schwinn', 'Boulder HQ Schwinn' continued to produce innovative, high quality MTBs through the '90's. The 'Homegrown' series of hardtails are still well regarded and command a premium price on Craigslist and Ebay... Schwinn ignoring MTBs, 1984. Schwinn ignoring MTBs, 1985. Schwinn ignoring MTBs, 1986. But the myth will persist.... Back on topic... My favorite 'vintage' bikes are Marin inspired Klunkers built on prewar Schwinn frames...
Schwinn used to have a timeline on their website and they said they ignored mountain bikes at first. Glad you love the myth.
Another example of why "Pacific Schwinn" isn't very well regarded as a historical reference in classic bike circles.... Contemporary magazines and catalogs show their presence in the market, doesn't take much research to see that. And yet another factory Schwinn rider ignoring MTBs. 1985. Ignoring klunkers while off roading a knobby tired, tubular fork equipped Schwinn. 1982. Even I ignored MTBs while riding my 1984 Schwinn High Sierra (R) photographed in 1986.
I'm not sure when the mountain bike craze took off in earnest, but I don't know if a few bikes from the mid-80s showed a serious interest by Schwinn in this market. There are several sources that claim Schwinn came late to the game... http://www.amazon.com/No-Hands-Schwinn-American-Institution/dp/0805035532 http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...sUP8PCHGmJSDpG-_g&sig2=TbqizwYq2tNGKC-Fyl_Vkg http://www.ehow.com/about_5382109_history-schwinn-bikes.html http://www.artipot.com/articles/1294928/the-schwinn-klunker-and-the-origins-of-mountain-biking.htm Your viewpoint is interesting because it is counter to much of what has been published on this topic, including (as mentioned above) the timeline Schwinn used to have on its own site stating that they ignored the mountain bike segment at first. They did get into it once the market grew, but by then other companies had already established their dominance. I don't think that Schwinn was ever in the same league as companies like Trek, Fisher, and others. That said, I'm a roadie. I don't know a lot about mountain bikes. I have no idea what "Pacific Schwinn" even means.
