WNG

If you were a kid in the 70s in the 'States, oh yeah! (Says Cool-Aid)
Mine was a Shimano 3-speed Firecracker. Red, white and blue. I busted that rear hub and needed it replaced.

Alekhine

My god these pics are fun. A+ thread. The 70s gave me a good childhood too, constantly outdoors, but you guys were clearly bigger daredevils than I was. I remember the badass kid who did all this stuff though. He used to wheelie around all over the neighborhood.

spacemanz

We had a late-60s maroon Chevy Impala station wagon, with real wood sides, not that new-fangled vinyl. I can remember every Saturday, us kids had to wash it & wax it, so it was clean enough to visit the grandparents on Sundays. As far as bikes, I don't remember exactly, my older brother went through several, by way of fixing & selling, & I got a few hand-me-downs. I got a Honda 125 for my 12th b'day (I had an alcoholic step-dad by then, LOL), and had my first good crash with stitches, around age 12 1/2. That earned me the title Awful Knawful, among friends & family. Yep, everybody loved Evel back then.

Lascauxcaveman 

All my buds had sting rays (or clones) and the jumps got higher and higher until someone got the idea to build a wall of cardboard boxes to crash through while airborne. This saved us in a couple ways, by limiting the height we fell from, and also giving us some nice collapsible crash barriers.

I still cant believe nobody's dad ever came out with a a camera. And nobody's mom came out to stop it.

Velognome 

Mine never did! Lost my front tooth in '74....and Ya, it was worth it!

Glennfordx4

Now this brings me back, A friends mom came and picked him up where we had a cheesy ramp set up and were jumping stuff all morning, she asked us if we could bring his bike home for him, sure we will we told her. His bike was a pretty new Yamaha MX model ( the one with the motorcycle shocks front & rear) and he refused to let us ride it, I don't think her tail lights were out of sight before we started building a bigger ramp, we took a 55gal drum stood it up and had a short heavy board lined up on it and I guarantee we were hitting 7 to 8' almost straight up off of that ramp with his Yamaha, I just loved that bike it made the jump so easy.

I don't have any pictures of me jumping anything on my bicycle and the ones of me jumping my 1977 Kawasaki KD 125 are in a album somewhere but I still have these to remind me of our Evel Knievel days.

This picture is of the same kind of bike we were using to jump the 55gal drum,



And I still have a ton of this stuff around to remind me,





Evel might have made more of his jumps if he had used a Sportster like this instead of the XR he used,

16Victor

That could have been me, except it would have been a '68 Ford Country Sedan wagon in the background, vs. the later model Country Squire shown. Got scars on my forearms by the elbows from that silliness.

Oh, mine was a second hand Murray F5 Eliminator, purple. Funny how we never forget.

Glennfordx4

My Friends and I loved jumping & between me & my buddy Dave it became a competition of who could jump higher & longer. We quickly moved away from 20" bikes & onto bikes with 26 1 3/8" wheels as we couldn't get enough speed to clear some of the things we were jumping at the time with the smaller size wheels. I could make both crank arms on a one piece crank point straight down upon landing on this one hill that was about 3' high but 18' long ( a road where they were replacing a water or sewer Pipe and left open for about 2 weeks ), we stopped putting a seat and post on the bikes we were jumping as they got in the way because of the frames bending in half, ahh good times.

Glenn

Michael Angelo 

I grew up in the Sixties, I just wanted a Roadbike like the bigger kids had. Never was into the "jump" thing....

Velognome 

Thank you Chud.com for remembering

triathloner

Our neighborhood in the country had a house that never happened, basement got dug but never went any further. So we shoveled one side to have a transition in for speed and then jump out the other side. If you hit it hard you flew a good 6 feet or so of air straight up, but landed on solid flat ground with little momentum forward. we kept doing it because we had a stick to measure who went highest. Sure hurt if your feet came off the pedals.

Bikedued

Yep, that was me too, but we used whatever we had to prop the ramp up. My first bike I have no idea what it was, but it was old enough to have North Road style bars and fenders when I first learned to ride. A few years later it sprouted box bars and a diamond stitched saddle from a ten speed. The funny thing is I never remember crashing a single time on a jump. It was always straight riding that got me, lol! Family wagon was a baby blue 66 Country Sedan, with a 289. All through my childhood I wanted to paint it candy red and put a set of Cragar S/S wheels on it. That dream was crushed when my idiot stepfather bent the frame on it pulling a tree down in the backyard. The front of the poor car lifted off the ground during that destructive episode. He only lived a few years after that, through his own bad habits.,,,,BD

Just like this, but a sky blue color. It had the double hinged door/tailgate. That was FASCINATING to me back then, hehe.

https://www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-co...5c6eeb40_z.jpg

pedalnmetal

Ah, yes. The EK gyro powered stunt cycle. If I wasn't playing with my Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, I was trying to jump Evel over pretty much anything. I used to crank the hell out of that little cycle, and think I still have some second degree burn scars on my hands from the rear wheel to prove it ...

rumrunn6

yes but I only curb hopped at the spot where the driveway met the sidewalk, on that little rampy part. my old sting ray did a good job with that and was just enough air to satisfy me.

randomgear

I did the curbcut ramp jump thing on a Ross Apollo, the pedal came off and I ended up with several stitches in the forehead. My mom through the Apollo away. I can't recall much about the replacement other than my dad backed over it in his truck, took it to work where the men in the repair shop had it running again by the time he got home.
Later when I was about 14, I was jumping what was probably an old stingray I picked up at the dump, the front wheel came off and my front teeth met the pavement. They were saved by my braces!

Not good times; the best of times!

Otis

For us it was not Evel. We wanted to be Roger DeCoster and Joel Robert. No ramps, just dirt.

Seeing that Yamaha "Moto Bike" brought back some memories. They sponsored a race series to promote those, held on courses built on high school running tracks with manufactured jumps, water traps, etc. I did a couple of them. All I remember is what slugs the Yamaha's (or anything with suspension) were and modified Sting Rays and home built race frames were doing a lot better.

lostarchitect 

I'm a little younger than a lot of you. I had one of these, but otherwise we did the same stuff!

Metacortex

The wood was fake, probably vinyl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Kingswood_Estate

rekmeyata

I use that sort of stuff all the time, including jumping off of real life stuff not man made ramps. People thought I was nuts, I justed wanted to fly. And I did my first jump on my first bike, a Mattel Vrrooom stingray in 1964! I was pissed at my parents because they waited so long for me to get my first bike, I was freaking 11. I guess they grew concerned when I use to jump off the second story window onto the ground below for fun, so they withheld buying me a bike whereas my older brother was too scared to jump out the window so he got a bike when he 7...or maybe because my dad was tightwad...I don't know. I learned how to ride a bike earlier than 11 because my brother taught me on his, but I didn't get my own bike till I was 11.

thinktubes 

Need to watch this this.

Gasbag

Ahh yes, I still owe Evel a punch in dangly bits for good ideas. In the neighborhood was a small hill that led to a drainage ditch and we would leap out into the chip seal road where the skid mark left would be used to gauge distance. I punished my Woolworth bike ruthlessly going for the best distance. There was usually enough juvenile flesh left in the road to keep the flies happy. Sometimes I wonder why it hurts to get out of bed in the morning and then I see this and think,"Oh yeah, that kid I was wasn't too bright".

Bikedud

Oh yeah- the man.

Fahrenheit531 

HAHAHAHA Ain't that the truth!

[EDIT] Anyone else try to get that last bit of functionality out of a stripped bar/stem? I think the full-weight solar plexus impact on the "gooseneck" was worse than any crotch shot I ever took.

[EDIT2] AAAAAIIGHHH There's my first "real" bike! The orange one at the bottom. I loved it stupidly, recklessly, and have no idea how it finally met its end.

TiHabanero

My brother cracked my sister's powder blue Fair Lady frame. Schwinn wouldn't cover it because the fork was bent. I took my mom's 3 speed Schwinn with 26 inch wheels out to the jumping spot down by Silver Creek. The mulberry tree was ripe for picking, and we filled up on them. Then went jumping. That didn't go so well. My nuts hurt for a week afterwards.

noglider 

The things boys do!