I figure if most of us like toys with wheels from the '60s and '70s, then some of you guys might appreciate this...

I've always loved old Schwinn Stingrays, though I never had one as a kid. Now, prices on the originals are nutso, and the repops that Schwinn did a few years ago go from $300 to $500--ouch. Then in a random visit to a Schwinn forum that I check once every few months, I see that Schwinn released a special repop Stingray/Krate to be sold at Walmart starting on Black Friday for--get this--$88!! And I only found this out in the middle of December. I figured they'd all be gone by then, but lo and behold, both Wallys by me had them. I bought a green one for $79. Then, on Christmas Eve, my local Wallys had them marked down to 35 bucks. I guess they weren't moving. How could I resist? So I got a blue and a black one, which makes one in every color that they released. And then I switched parts around on them from the junk in my shed to make them all different types of bikes... the green mimics an early '60s Super Deluxe, the blue a late '60s fenderless, and the black a mid '70s BMX conversion...

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rwurtz/crazy88/3rays06a.JPG

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rwurtz/crazy88/3rays03a.JPG

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rwurtz/crazy88/3rays04a.JPG

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rwurtz/crazy88/3rays05a.JPG

When I got them, they all had a big blackwall slick on the rear, a color-matched banana seat, a springer fork and 16" front wheel, and bars like the blue bike in the pic...

--rick

Thanx for the trip....down memory lane.

I had the blue one.

Very nice !
I had a Schwinn Sting Ray when I was young, that was the bike everyone wanted.

I hope you know or have some kids that can use those. :thumbsup:

yeah, I have 4 kids, ranging in age from 3 to 10... I like to share my toys with them :D

--rick

Sweet. I had a nice Copper '68 Schwinn Fastback 5 speed a couple of years ago that was just liek the one I had as a kid. I would take it to the race track or to car shows to ride around on. Fat slick on the back, banana seat, chrome fenders, mag wheel sprocket, etc. It got a lot of attention. I ended up selling it back to the bike shop I got it from; "The Old Spokes Home". :p

It was very similar to this one:

http://www.bikeicons.com/images/1971%20Schwinn%20Sting%20Ray%20Fastback%205%20spee d%20Boys.jpg

$35 what a deal!
Schwinn weren't available in Canada when I was a kid but every kid in town wanted one. One of my friends parents bought one for him in Buffalo and he basically introduced BMX to our town. He had it stripped down and repainted custom in a couple of weeks and after seeing him catwalk all the way down the street everyone started ripping their bikes apart and rebuilding them bmx style. I remember I had just gotten a new banana seat for my birthday and was saving up for some highrise handle bars. What a goofy combination it was with the old fashioned low bars. My bike was pitiful so I ditched the seat for a 10 speed seat and rebuilt the whole thing. I had a really cool 2 speed hub you could kick back to change gears but it wasn't freewheeling so I had to lose that too. There weren't a lot of parts available back then so we improvised. I remember everyone bought motorcycle grips from the local hardware store. They couldn't keep up with demand and couldn't figure out why every kid in town was buying them. We had to tape up one side of the handle bar so the grips would fit since the hole on one side was larger for the throttle mechanism on a real bike. We used to take a 3 speed hub and screw an old spoke in the mechanism to lock it in 2nd gear to do jumps and tricks. We lived on our bikes all summer back then. It was a blast.
I remember we had some ramps set up on a local bridge and a guy pulling over to play the live radio broadcast of Evil Knievel jumping the snake river canyon.

Great looking bikes! :thumbsup:

I used to have the boys moto-cross version for the jumping and such, and a girls frame (lighter) for freestyle - no-hands wheely riding, bunny hoping fences/friends willing to lie down across the sidewalk, etc.

Great memories - thanks!

Glad you guys like :D

Hey, be aware that for 88 bucks (or 79 or 69 or 35 or whatever your particular Wally's marked them down to--I heard as low as 29 somewhere) you are NOT getting an exact replica of the old-school Schwinns. From 10 feet away, they look cool, and they actually do ride well, but if you look close, it's cheap Chinese manufacturing. Especially if you're a fan of the originals, you'll see that the welds are not the same quality, the chainguard is cheap-feeling tin, the pedals have black plastic blocks that are supposed to look like the old rubber ones. I'm definitely not complaining, I LOVE these things... just stating that they are not the same animal as the original by a long shot.

It's funny, because on the Schwinn boards, I heard some of the very same discussions/arguments I've heard here about JL and AW cars compared with original Auroras. One camp LOVES the fact that they have some new, affordable raw material to play with, and so what if it's got some drawbacks? The other camp thinks the repop is a travesty and a disgrace, and the cheap junk is hurting the value of their collectible originals. Put me in the first camp for both slot cars and Stingrays... :D

BTW, on the black BMX one... I had a friend who had some sort of Stingray or off-brand bike with the same frame design when we were kids. When BMX hit, his dad did a killer black paint job on it and he went the BMX route with it--he raced it for a while till he got a Supergoose and got serious. Memories of his bike are why I chose the black one for the BMX look...

--rick

I hadn't ridden my Schwinn Varsity 10-speed since 1987 until last summer -- had the local bike place give it the once over and some new rubber and I was all set again. Aside from the new tires (gumwall, thank-you) all it needed was two new spokes and a slight adjustment to the brakes. :D

I remember when a friend got the first motocross handlebars any of us had - the ones that were almost just a straight bar, with the added support piece. Way cool!

And the first "Junior Bars", which I think are the same as on your black bike. Those were a big improvement over the ape-hangers, which were prone to break when jumping, often followed by a nasty kiss to the gooseneck.

Cool thread, as most of us played with the bikes in the summer and slots in the winter. Here's me in 1976 and no, I didn't paint it - my brother did. I have a handful of banana-seat bikes taking up space in the garage including an incredibly nice original Schwinn Hurricane that I got at a Salvation Army three years ago for $10.

Rick,
Some great looking bikes. What memories. :) rr

ape-hangers, which were prone to break when jumping, often followed by a nasty kiss to the gooseneck.

LMAO Been there done that many times before the reenforced bars came out.

I had one nasty crash when the old bar broke off in my right hand while doing a catwalk down the street. We had them cranked so far forward that when I came down I flipped right over the front end (goose neck to the chest) on to the pavement. Good thing we were made of rubber when we were kids.
Still managed to ride home with one bar though.

Here's a picture of me and my first brand new bike, my parents bought for me after I learned to ride without training wheels, on a bike my father built from pieces he got at the dump. My best friend had a goldish yellow Schwinn three speed and I always beat him in races with my green Columbia one speed shwon in the picture.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f288/micyou03/2008-02%20Slots/MikeColumbiaBikea.jpg

My mother insisted that I have a basket on my bike and I did not want it. It turned out to be the best thing.

I came across this picture while looking for the bike picture. We used to call it our Flintstones Go-Cart.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f288/micyou03/2008-02%20Slots/FlintstonesGoCarta.jpg

OMG Mike! Memory lane.

A surviving coaster pic. LOL...super cool with the surry top...dead mans hill here we come.

Howza 'bout some build specs on that deluxe Conestoga