carpediemracing 

Hm I never thought of it that way. I have one in my garage. Not restored, but it has a new tire on it. New in 1980 or so, barely ridden since. I passed up a chance to buy a twin for $20. Kicking myself ever since.

cdr

BobHufford

It's "Electro-Forged" (flash welded) -- same as the Varsity, etc.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/varsity.html

The Super Sports, Sports Tourers, Superiors (and some others) were fillet-brazed.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/schwinn-braze.html

Bob

repechage

Yes, and the hot set up in 1972 was a Fairlady (20 x 1 3/4" front and rear) with welded in tubes to partial close up the open area, a small tube welded between the two down tubes, and reinforcements between the seat stays and chainstays. Cut off the small hoop above the banana seat, tuck the struts inside the saddle, butterfly bars, motorcycle grips, Schwinn tractor tires. Remove the kickstand.

Lighter than a boys Sting Ray too.

Chainguard of course gone, and reflectors? Surely you joke.

squirtdad

Wheelies yes....racing no.... I was a bit jealous when my younger siblings and friends started to get these bikes....until I realized how much faster my 26" coast to coast bike. And I was rotten at wheelies

repechage

On the West Coast with Schwinn's pricing system they were more, add the 6.5% sales tax at the time and they never were under $100.

Rabid Koala

If I was racing, I rode my JC Higgins Austrian 3 speed. I kicked everyone's butt on that thing. I wasn't afraid to bust it up, it was old and decrepit anyway. I never would have raced on my then new Raleigh Grand Prix, at least not when it was new.

smunderdog

Huffy Desperado for me...man that thing was ugly with the cactus on the seat, but it provided some great memories...

metabike

We were doing the same kind of thing in metro-Detroit in the early '70's, copying the off-road motorcycles that older siblings had. Ah those were the days...I managed to break the down tube on my Stingray and had it warrantied through Schwinn. I also had the stem break on me (weird sensation to suddenly be holding bars that were not attached to anything). Broke the fork and had it warrantied. Looking back on how much abuse I piled onto that bike, I can't imagine any company today ever being as kind to a kid as Schwinn was, God Bless 'em they were a great outfit!

umpire54

In 1968 I had a green Stingray with a steering wheel on it (regular front wheel - no shifter). I bought it for $3.00 at a police auction my dad took me to one freezing winter morning. I got it home and put a banana seat and a sissy bar with pad on it. It was a cool bike in the day~ everybody knew it was my ride and I could skid a mile with that fat slick!

I remember how fun it was to ride with "no hands"...that is until I was going down a huge huge hill one day just crusing my neighborhood. I was leaning back on the sissy bar...summer wind blowing in my face and then all I saw was sky...then pavement...then sky...then pavement. Of course I was only wearing a pair of shorts, it was summer after all.

My seat had popped off of the seat post (the sissy bar did stay attached at the rear axle though! ) and I just went flying backwards donating skin to the pavement gods as I flopped from front to back to front to back. My bike continued down the hill as it was a well tuned machine (although it was dragging a sissy bar with a seat bouncing on it).

Later as my bleeding carcass walked my bike home I remembered the exact moment 2 years earlier when I had put the new seat and sissy bar on. I remembered "NOT" tightening the seatpost clamp because I was in such a hurry to ride the bike...I popped the seat on and it felt tight enough for an 8 year old so off I rode.

The crash and burn happened on a Saturday, I remember, because the next day I had to go to church with my new road rash oozing through my clothes. I also only had on sox because my feet were swelled up and oozing I couldn't put my shoes on. I do wish I had that bike now though! I guess I'll build me one up some day!

ARider2

I loved my cherry red 1969 Schwinn Apple Crate with it's 5 speed shifter, sprung seat posts, springer fork and drum brake. Too bad it was thrown out some time in the late 70's when my parents were cleaning out the basement.

old's'cool

Forgot to mention, re-enactments of Rollerball played on a grass field, bike riders would get up a head of steam and ride down the field, opposing team on foot would "tackle" the bikes. About as rough a game as rugby or murderball, as you'd expect.

Does anyone else remember this, some of the kids in my neighborhood built their mustangs into choppers: a donor fork was used to obtain two extension blades by sawing the prongs off near the crown, the extensions were slipped over the dropouts of the project bike's fork and bolted or welded in place, resulting in an extreme fork extension and front end lift. In spite of the mass of the front wheel way up ahead, the rotation about the C of G due to the front end lift made these bikes extremely wheelie happy. And I do believe the trail was "negative". Needless to say, these bikes did not offer any particular speed or handling advantage, but they certainly were cool! One one occasion I recall, during execution of a wheelie, one rider inadvertently jettisoned his entire (poorly attached) fork extension, with predictable ensuing results!

Tundra_Man 

A kid who lived around the corner had a bike with that conversion. His dad built it for him.

He never let me take it for a spin. And I rarely ever saw him ride it either. I get the impression is looked a lot more fun to ride than it was.

His dad also built a homemade tandem by removing the front wheel off a Stingray-styled bike and attaching it to the rear of another Stingray styled bike. This created a three-wheel monstrosity that IIRC worked better in his head than in reality.

frpax

Like SO many other ideas!

ilikebikes

fify.....me thinks?

sailorbenjamin

I had the kind with the top tube you could take out if you were a girl. Dad was always taking it out for my sister and then forgetting to put it back.
I came in second in a charity bikathon (for my age). The guy who beat me had one of those new 10 speeds.

curbtender

If you would have trimmed the cards in your spokes better it might have been a different story. Live and learn...

Kommisar89

Man you guys building the proto-bmx bikes were sure some early adopters! By the early 70's we were dumping our Stingray style bikes for "10-speeds" in quantity. I never heard of or saw anything like a bmx bike until around 1978 or so when my buddy's 12yo brother got one for Christmas or a birthday or something. It was metallic red with gold anodized alloy everything and cost $450 dollars!!! I had never imagined such a thing!

Kommisar89

That reminds me of a time when we were a bit older and had dirt bikes. This one friend of mine had a Husqvarna 420 Automatic enduro bike and was pulling a long wheelie down the street in front of the house. Just then, at the most inopportune moment, the Husky decided to upshift into a higher gear. It rolled gracefully over backwards as he leaped off for dear life.

Actually now that I think about it, he bought that bike because I had a Husky 390 Auto bored twice over with a pipe, carb, and K&N filter. When I bought it, the guy brought it over to my house and wheeled it into the backyard. I had never ridden a motorcycle before so he should me how everything worked. I got on and fired that mother up. Rappa, rappa, rappa, rappa it went as it idled. Ra-gah!, ra-gah! as I blipped the throttle. RA-GAH!!! as I gave it one more twist. Suddenly it pulled up into a wheelie and shot off across the backyard like an F/A-18 on afterburners on a catapult launch. I almost flew right off the back but held on for dear life, my feet flying off the back. ZOOM! I went across the backyard. I had forgotten that it didn't have a clutch lever so when I revved the throttle the centifical clutch engaged and off it went. Since there was no clutch lever to disengage the engine and somehow I couldn't let go of the throttle I kept right on going until I ran into the fence and crashed.

buck mulligan

I had a generic Stingray copy - I don't even remember the make. It was all about wheelies, jumping over jury-rigged ramps, and trail riding in the local woods. Those were some good times....

old's'cool

Isn't that a weird thing about motorcycle twist handlegrip throttles? -i.e. when the bike starts to get away on you, there's positive feedback - quite thrilling to experience the first time or two until you learn to apply a forward torque to oppose the linear force needed to hang onto the bike via the throttle grip!

Exit.

Hahaha. Some things never change. I still do that on my track bike all the time.

Im Fixed

I have a boys raliegh made Ingland NOTINGHAM .... Mustage I guess single speed complete and a girls ccm that needs bars that are headed to the shreader,

metabike

Might just be an age difference of a few years - my older brother got a Takara while I was still breaking my Stingray. A few years later, probably '77, I got a Varsity, which changed my perspective as I could ride a lot farther, much easier. Still had the dirt bike bug though: I remember being able to ride the Varsity to the woods near the community college and hittin' the trails with that beast - I was cyclocrossing before it was cool and hip!

bbattle

I had Sting-Ray knock-offs from Wards or Woolco, then a Western Flyer, then a Sears? Open Road with 3-speed grip shifter. It was white with red and blue stripes, just like Evel Knievel's motorcycle! The 3-speed didn't work so well so my dad had it converted to singlespeed. I remember kids making choppers out of their bikes and the early bmx bikes with the capsule-shaped seats and bmx bars. When I was in third grade back in '74, some kid brought his new 10-speed with 24" wheels to school. He was mobbed. Only kid I ever saw riding such a bike. I had the white bike for ten years then gave it away. No bikes for 6 years then I got Muffies then Diamondback hardtails with rigid forks.

never did get a real "10-speed" until 2005.

lecky

There's an entertaining documentary called Joe Kid on a Stingray about the development of BMX, starting with kids modding their Stingrays. Here's the teaser/trailer for it: