Hands down the (2) worse products from the 70's...
The two products that cost me and others a good amount of races;
Polly Pedals- first plastic body pedal on a steel shaft. I use to shear the bodies right off the shafts at the start of a race.
And then the worse was Addicks (plastic) sprockets. Can not tell you how many of these I busted at the start of a race....
Would like to have killed however invented these two products!!!!!!

I remember the the headlight. I thought it was cool especially the noise that it made when you pedaled.

This thread just keeps on keepin' on. It seems about every year and a half or so it comes back to the surface. The thread that wouldn't die. hahahahahahahah...... There truly were some great products made over the years, but the there truly were some bad ones too!

On a note of advertising. I always hated that Beta shoes ad with the Gorilla. I would always see it and say to myself,are these guys serious? hahahahahaha....

I think that any padsets with snaps on them were pretty much junk. They always seemed to rust and fuse together. Eddie Fiola used to advertise for Citi-Cat with the Black Plastic center deal that provided suspension. Skyway had a freestyle seat that would eject a plastic rod so you could catch your handlebars on some tricks or let them spin on others. Odyssey Tires that looked like footprints, brake shoes that looked like Vans. Some of these weren't necessarily bad products as much as they were silly.

Had $1400 in my Hutch BITD and those damn Hutch grips were ABSOLUTE garbage!! Back to Oakley!

the ACS doubler.
Worked for about 5 minutes then broke.

ACS Z Rims

Anyone notice that the items repeated the most times[Addicks,Hare trigger,Kingsbury,etc.]are plastic contraptions?Anyone remember the utterly pointless seat post covers,y'know the kind that matched the silly chain cover?

And then the worse was Addicks (plastic) sprockets. Can not tell you how many of these I busted at the start of a race....


I would have thought after the first one, especially the first two, you would have figured out the flaw in the system and switched to a standard chainring.

Ya know the definition of insanity: Trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

I have an Addicks chainring that my dad got when he bought a box of bits for my bike back in 1982. Its a 42t, I never used it but it looks like it was used at some point. Its only dirty and doesn't look worn at all. Can anyone tell me when they were made and how I could tell if it was plastic or graphite?

On the subject of worst products from BITD, for me, living in the UK it has to be the Raleigh Burner (and they probably did 10 different models)

z-rims the alltime worst
kastan uni-blade fork/hub

Phillips or slot head head brake lever bolts, alloy brake cable nuts, stripped out within days...had to break down and get a box of allen bolts in '81 that finally worked.

Race bikes with "steel" seat clamps up to '79.... when everything else was alloy and bikes had lightweight skinwalls (go figure).

Here's a pic of an addicts Graphite chain ring in action , they were always black & had a completely different feel to the plastic ones...




I still have this 46T piece of carp , it has an assortment of danger & warning words etc written on it using a white marker


Graphite Z rims are the same , apart from the sticker the feel or texture of them is completely different from the "plastic" or Xytel (??) ones





JB

Is that true?.........I remember them coming in several colors.


Longere

This thread is funny, you can tell some of the guys who didnt really race and the ones who didnt freestyle either, but opinions are opinions and we all have them.


Super Sucker tires.....name says it all.

Grab-on grips, This shows what advertising does for a product.

I still have a pair of Malcolm Smith Gaiters. I never used them in BMX only in MX & Harescrambles.

I liked A'ME & OURY grips.
I have A'ME on my Torker.

Pretty much anything Rampar.
70 degree headtube angled hi-ten glory

I got a torn up 42T Blue addicts sprocket here as well for comparison , it is not made outta graphite.
It was made outta Zytel like all the other coloured addicts sprockets , & after a bit of hard work white flex & tear marks appear in them , the graphite sprockets never showed those kind of failure marks.
Plus its pretty hard to put full colour into a graphite polymer composite.

I was working in a chain of 3 bike stores in Sydney ~1981 after school , we got to see , test , laugh , oohh , ahhh etc at all the new funky products that streamed in from the US & Japan into our floorstock.

Skyway Graphite pedals straight outta the box only needed a few turns & a bit of handling to know they wern't going onto my bike , they might have been good for 5 year olds mini's but not any kind of severe duty.

Andy Patterson had a set that looked very similar to these when he rode for Skyway.






JB

Team Murray BMX bikes. I remember I saw many kids riding them, not racing them. I took great pleasure in taking those bikes to the limit when an unsuspecting kid let me 'Try' one out at the trails. I cracked a couple of those frames and bent a few others and always trashed the wheels. In fact one of my neighbors got one and only had it a week, let me jump it at the trails and I cracked the top tube at the head. He brought it home and his father bought him a Redline to replace the bike. He actually thanked me for trashing his Team Murray. Why didn't his pop just get him the Redline in the first place? Team Murray bikes total P.O.S.!!

Team Cycle! Remeber there parts back in the department stores? Looked like the good stuff, till ya bought it!

Cheng Shin tires. Same thing, looked like Comp III's, till ya tried one!

And add me on the Z rims. Yes, many of my old school rides still have them, but they didnt do what was expected. Which was always bend back etc. or the freezer gimmick etc. Still cool, but after saving and waiting for my Mike Buff set, and folding them the first day, kind was a let down!

I bought one recently, cause it was cheap and from BITD, kinda for kicks etc. You know, the rear drop outs arent even welded on!There "smushed" in the tubing, with one "dimple" to hold them!

Yeah I relished any opportunity to try and squash those bikes BITD!! It wasn't too hard to do either! BTW I am fairly small never weighed more than 160 lbs.

I disagree.

The frame in the pics looks to be much better quality than I remember. What is it?

Team Murray X-20C

of all the tires I have found over the years the ones that held up the best on beat down survivors were cheng shins, I am also pretty sure they were stock tires on a lot of decent bikes bitd......but I only ran tiogas cause I was spoiled.

Certainly wouldn't have been able to squash that frame! Curious as to the year of that frame. After 83 I kinda lost touch with what was out there. The brake bracket on that frame is the only thing which looks familiar as Murray. I can't recall seeing chrome and welds on the Team Murrays I was referring to. I have to rethink my position on Team Murrays!

Maybe, but the one Brian posted is a ringer. Those were real BMX frames. NICE!

I completely understand where the Murray/crap opinion comes from but historically, Murray was a dept. store brand who targeted the "can't quite afford a Schwinn" crowd and did quite well for a few decades. Heck, my first "bmx" bike was a Hills bought Murray.

Like thousands of other kids I ended up putting a few higher end parts on it to make it more respectable at the track till I was finally able to get my first "real" bmx bike.
I always dug the Murray factory team back in the day and knew that I'd eventually be able to get one of thier higher end frames from before the Cyclecraft built era. The first one I got was from a Murray Distributor back in 1985 that was a leftover X-20C after they quit producing them. I raced it for several years, sold it and aquired this one a few years back on e bay. Again, probably an 82-83 model.
Here's how it would've been sold as a complete bike. All ACS, Elina, Sugino, Dia-Comp, Knarler, and UKAI equipped (photo taken from web):


If you go the museum tab at the top of the page, take a look at Oliver's Murray. He's a big fan from Germany and has a prime example of a one off frame that was made for Scott Clark.
What I always find ironic is that everyone bashes Murrays because they took the time to break them back in the day, but I come from an area that was saturated with Thrusters and Rippers and I can't think of an example that wasn't sent back due to breakage. That was a lot of money back in the day for something that was almost gauranteed to break. I just scored another Tri Power F/F the other night and I can't believe it isn't cracked !

Brian, this is why I love this site so much. I learn something everyday. I had a bad habit of trying to destroy any bike I could when I was a kid. Just seemed the Murrays always seemed to satisfy. That said I also damaged a few Schwinns too. I grew up where Schwinn was king, Chicagoland. I cracked a weld on a PK as well as bending many many sets of rims. Although there came a point where no one would let me ride their bike because it seemed I was so intent on trying to create some kind of damage and in retrospect I think I was the one most damaged! In the brain! I was not a good kid BITD! Thanks for sharing the pics and info!

I hated the Ame duals, especially cause it always got hot in the summertime and it was impossible to hang on to those grips without gloves!

How about that EGG shaped front sprocket? What was that thing called, I can't remember....

Roger Durham Elliptical Sprocket (AKA Bullseye)

heh...i know the subject is a few months old, but talking about trying to break frames bitd, we did the exact opposite. We tried to be as smooth as possible. Try jumping the Widowmaker at Cowtown and NOT breaking a Murray. Now that would be an accomplishment. Ironically, a Murray factory rider was Mr Smooth himself, the late great Anthony Sewell. R.I.P.

JMC's, Phil Wood hubs, Redline flight cranks.

All were awful, awful products.

Absolutely the best thread ever. Huge demand brought out all the crackpot get-rich-quick types, back in the day. Today's bikes are so boring because people now demand stuff that works.

OK:

All Quadangles. I have an '83 and I love it, but that was a bad idea from the beginning.

Echo full-face helmets. Make you look like an old man who forgot to put his dentures in.

Snake belly tires.

Uni plates. How many % faster?

Tech 2 levers.

Studd quick-change sprocket.

Shimano Tourney MX caliper

And just to be contrary: I really like the Vector bar/stem combo; makes good sense even today.

The oval chainwheels I saw were shimano "biopace"

My brother and I broke 4 huffy pro thunders that we could get for free before my dad bought us a torker to share at the track.

WHAT? How does the Quadangle fit in the worst category? Please explain your rationale.

QUOTE (Brian B @ Oct 18 2009, 07:56 PM)

Team Murray X-20C

The XC 20 was a total departure from the former "track certified" team Murray. Almost all of the older models in the town i grew up in, broke at the seat stay/seat tube junction and had to be rewelded.

Mx Mug

lol, i didnt even know i had uncool parts. in 82 i thought my CW looked sweet with that pro-guard on it. i also liked saber plates.

Hey my team and I were in that tv ad . Pat Maphis was the gorilla.

They're bad, structurally. They were an inefficient way to solve the problem. And the '83-styles broke at the unsupported top tube/ top brace junction.

Don't get me wrong, I love 'em, mainly because they show just how fun, experimental, and off-the-wall things were back then.

On the other hand, the S-bend stays were brilliant, the shorty dropouts made perfect sense, and it was probably the first to use the higher tensile strength cromos that were being developed.

Not hatin'

As far as the Quads go, I thought they were actually quite strong. I broke a few different frames, but was unable to break my Quad. And I jumped the tarnation out of that thing and it is still in one piece. Maybe I just had the technique down.

this won't be popular with most, but i'm going to say it anyways-

pit bikes.

never saw the point of looking like magilla gorilla riding around the pits, when you could just walk. they were pretty popular around my local track.

I'm glad someone else revived this thread!

Some things I wasted my money on BITD.

1. Tioga roll-ons: stripped two sets of those on my Schwinn Predator before I learned my lesson.
2. Vans Brake Shoes...brake shoes.

Any brake calipers you could get at Wal-Mart or Ace Hardware! C'mon, I was 11. What did I know?

A funny product was Odyssey Barefeet tires. I had them in white, and black in 1987. I think I had one in blue.

Aluminum fluted seat posts. I bent every single one of them I owned.

hollow 1 piece cranks and those silly oakley winged grips (what ever they were called).

Cyclecraft 'Pogo Sticks" forks....

remember all the 'Get-O-Wear' stuff from Brian Fell? the face mask neoprene thingys? made you look like you were wearing a ski mask to race. What about those neoprene things that went on the sides of your forks like little wings?

Welcome to Vintage Brian. My last post as a AApro here at vintage.