I just had to share this... Awesome Sting Rays

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE-txZE2ggg

[ May 02, 2007, 09:45 AM: Message edited by: Brad Apold ]

man I am going out to the garage and get some old skate board wheels and some tubing and get to welding!!

I forgot about the barspin part of that ad!
TIM had one of those a few months ago, didn't someone say they used one?

Thats for some funky far out US 1960's TV.
I don't think they ever made it to Austalian shores, never seen anything like it fit to a pedal powered bike
although I have tripped over the wheelie bars on a street registered drag car in the dark....

TideyBuddha , that old ad got my brain ticking as well , I might draw up some plans first tho.

I wonder if there is a place for Wham-o Wheelie bar's in modern BMX ? How many times have you seen someone pull off an insane backflip combo , only to land & have their real wheel go out from under them , leaving them flat on their back...serves them right for not running a rear brake I suppose.

Coming soon Wham-o wheel pegs !
Do you find that the friction of grinding foot pegs on rails , cement , coping etc only slows your styling moves down ?
Wham-o pegs will let you grind forever as they are friction free !!! Be the envy of all your friends as you slide off the coping of a 15ft half pipe & create all new friction free peg tricks !!!

Only from Wham-o , where we have 100% Federal law suit immunity from the damages & trouble our products may get you into.

Waay to cool.

JB

I have some of those on a ray. I can't seem to ride them out llike those young people though!LOL !good find Brad

drop your repop ideas in the can. the sting-ray guys are sooooooo far ahead of you. wham-o repops have been available for years.

post a wanted ad on the schwinn forums, or check availability at www.hyper-formance.com

http://www.hyper-formance.com/stuff.htm

Never tried one, but seems like it would be harder to ride with a wheelie bar .... ?

[ May 02, 2007, 10:01 PM: Message edited by: Brad Apold ]

Why the hell**** would I bother to repo _any_ parts for a bike that was never commercially available in Oz?

In 1965 I could safely say there was less 1000 Schwinn bicycles of any type in Australia. Probably the same number of Schwinn's here in 2007.

Name's like Sting-Ray's , Lemon Krate's etc have no real meaning or memory for us , as they were never expected to be under the Xmas tree or on display to drool over at the local bike shop. We had locally made bikes , UK imports & Japanese bikes here.US made bikes were heavily taxed/tarrifed back then.

Schwinn is a US icon , every US person here has lot's of fond childhood or teenage stoies to tell of about growng up & if a bicycle is involved , you can almost bet a Schwinn will feature in it.

Here's my Australian Schwinn story.
My first sighting/memory of a Schwinn was at Metro West BMX race track in 1981 , a guy called Albert sponsored by Blue Flame BMX had a chrome one that looked unusual & slick , smoothed out welds at every join & "ovalized" tubing & tapered forks , it may have had a 5 inch head tube , it was an interesting looking bike , unfortunately Albert was a sore loser , I'd beat him 90% of the time we raced , he didn't like me scoping out his "unusual" looking bike or telling me what a Schwinn was , his response to my questions was usually "I'm going to put you off the track this race" or Funk Off. We were both sponsored by rival Bike Shops so that probably didn't help relationships between us all that much either , despite the fact that I got along well with Chuck May (owner of BF BMX & his son Darrin May)
Thats all I remember about seeing Schwinn bicycles as a teenager. Most other people here in Oz will have even less of a story about Schwinn bikes.

I now understand what a Schwinn bike means to most US people , it was part of growing up & the main frame to modify into a BMX bike that you could race , jump & eventually break.
Beefing up a local made dragster frame with a euro bottom bracket , cotter pin cranks & fitting knobby tires etc was a very underground / backyard activity in the early 1970's , mostly done by fathers who raced MX bikes , so their kids to imitate them around the vacant lots of suburbia with jumps & berms etc etc quietly to keep the neighbours happy. A noisy 2 stroke MX bike , suburbia & a 10+ year old kids just didn't mix.

Our first taste of a production "BMX" bike here was around 1976 with the Repco Monoshock , sprung MX style forks , with a euro BB & cotter pin cranks.Anything else was home made or quietly imported by individuals.

Despite being around drag cars most my life I never thought of fitting a wheely bar to my bicycle , seeing that there was actually a mass marketed product made in the US back in 1965 blew me away & gave me a few ideas for other amusing & possibly dangerous bolt rolling parts for new school bikes...

Now that you have a better understanding of Schwinn Bicycles (or lack of them) in Australia , you might understand why I wanted to draw up some plans , as no repo items that are for sale in the US are going to bolt on to any of our local bikes without drastic modifications , so I'll look into building something for myself from scratch.

The idea of building up some "Wham-O" style roller pegs for a BMX instead of the normal grinding ones
might be fun or extremely dangerous.Who knows.

I'll save any further thoughts on engineering stuff for the tech & restoration guys.

More FUN from Wham-O


JB

eh....

Wham-O wheelie bars fit any sissy-bar style 20" bicycle.

they weren't designed by or for Schwinn Sting-Rays specifically.

they used Super Surfer clay skateboard wheels.

Loved the dragstrip footage of The Little Red Wagon!

Another example of a fine "precision engineered" product from the funmeisters at Wham-O!

I dig the kid spinning the bars while wheelie'n... Try that with 28" Hutch bars. LOL!!! Watch out for the boys downtown... OUCH!

I used to have a set on a Krate. They were tough to ride and the clay wheels were not very smooth. Leaning back was easy but keeping the wheelie on track to the left or right was difficult because of the wheels....at least on asphault. A clean concrete slab was better but not very common in my neighborhood.

I suppose they could help you nail manuals---if ya get back too far, they'd stop you from landing on your rumpah...

When you got 'em down, you take off the "training wheels", LOL

looking at that ad and seeing those kids reminds me, once again, how amazing it is that any of us managed to reach adulthood.

that ad and seeing those kids also makes me realize why we have so many lawyers...

^^^Yep, Babyboomers mucked up things when they started taking over.

I so want a set now. I wonder if I can get a set to work with my new school Directlink.

agentheinz , is on the right track.
A set of "training wheels" for modern day tricks & moves that us older "kids" can use until we find our balance point.

The original Wham-o bars looked like an accident waiting to happen & someone in the US nowdays would be after someone to blame for "little johnny" busting himself up with an Ambulance chaser in tow , hence my comment about "Wham-o's 100% Federal lawsuit immunity."

To make it _reasonably_ safe you would have to minimise the contact area of the 3rd wheel & not give it too much grip , thats why the original 3rd wheel was made of clay , it helped keep the rider on the bike & on track with the laws of Inertia too , no lateral grip.

By fitting a single wide & sticky skateboard wheel to the back today , soon as you lean back too far at speed yer going to get more lateral grip than you will probably need at the time & more than likely get into trouble if manualing or wheelstanding.
That's probably why the original product was called Wham-o , due to the accidents they had during prototype testing

Maybe a pair of hard skateboard wheels mounted onto a mid width set of trucks with soft adjustable truck rubbers will give you just enough lateral grip & slide to keep you out trouble & inline with the laws of Inertia.

It would be an interesting challenge to design engineer & fabricate a reasonably safe modern day version of the Wham-o wheelie bar , that could easily bolt onto the "new" style double diamond frames most of us ride today.
Definately not a mass production item I'd want to get involved with tho , WHAM-Ohhhh.....

JB