The other day, I arrived home from work to find Ian and his pals playing basketball in the driveway. I said hello to the boys and surveyed the bikes laying on lawn, this old school BMX bike catching my eye in a second - mixed in among the modern, lower end Giant and Trek mountain bikes.
Of course I geeked out and grabbed the camera, even though it was almost dark...
Old school BMX stance, complete with laid back seatpost. Appears to be '80s vintage.
Cool, eh?
Z-Rim made from nylon and unbendable. GT fork, from back in the day when GT was high end.
Race Inc. frame I'm not familiar with - many smaller high end BMX companies from that era. I am familiar with the build kit, since my bike shop days were in the early to mid '80s. Shop I worked at carried Mongoose and at that time, Mongoose was a high end brand - not the department store level crap found under most Mongoose stickers today.
I assembled many BMX bikes during my bike shop days, but never owned anything like this. My BMX era, being a few years earlier, revolved around converted Sting Rays and cheaper copies of such. I never actually raced BMX, but spent plenty of time pretending to around the neighborhood. A friend of mine was actually a BMX pro, back in the '80s, riding for Team Thruster.
Pretty nice, even with the twisted saddle.
Sugino Maxy Cross crankset.
Old school Dia-comp brake lever and GT 'bars.
Tuf-Neck stem. I installed plenty of these back in the day.
After snapping the pics, kid mentioned the bike belonged to his dad and he gets to borrow it. Very cool "hand me down" if you can call it that. I reminded the kid what trick bike this was and now a vintage BMX collectable. Don't get it stolen!
Fun and unexpected time travel visit, that happened to land right in my yard. Thanks for the memories...
There must be a big following of these old BMX bikes in South Africa and South Asia. When I sold my grips off the MB-1 that's where everyone was from that was bidding on them.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. When I sold off some vintage mountain bike items about two years ago, some interest from the England. Different scenes for different areas...
ReplyDeleteThe z rims are quite bendable. The cool thing about z rims was they could easily be bent back or were reshaped. I use to race back in the day and remember all these parts quite well. Thanks for taking me back!
ReplyDeleteMy first real racing bike was a Cr-Mo race inc. 1984, in the same color Candy blood red with foil gold stickers. With mostly the same parts. That is actually a rare find to say the least. race inc. made both Alloy and Cr-Mo frames. The Alloy frames sold more so the Cr-Mo frames are hard to come by. Mine was stolen in Chicago. Race inc., is also the original manufactures of the more popular SE Racing PK Ripper.
ReplyDeleteI built one in 1976 power lite forks tuff neck araya wheels fluted bars and post dual free wheel sprockets 14 /16 grab on grips , did not have a place to mount brake on the frame rode like that for years finally found aluminum clamp for brakes traded for a go cart, should have never done that!
ReplyDeleteGreat bblog I enjoyed reading
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