Ahh yes I remember Mick in Sunshine gear!
As for the Southern Cross freestyler! This is a pommy meteor lite freestyle! pretty similar Yeah?

That Cobra is on Johnny Chopper's site in the "ID that part" section! So thats what it is.

It helps plenty , won't argue with Mick Wiltshire being a brutally fast rider either , Coast VL & I hooked up with Mick & Johhny Harris & his lunatic friends at 5 Dock Skatepark one day & ended up freestyling tricks on the front steps of the Sydney Opera House , riding all thru the nice grassy areas looking for drop offs , jumps etc in the Botanical gardens & across the Sydney Harbour bridge , not in that order , fun day to say the least

This picture still confuses me tho

Arron lived in the general area we lived in , bitd , he came into the shop regularly ,but was a few years younger than us & his bike (from memory) was not all that skatepark street thrashable....
Unfortunately Leigh Casper never came into the shop , either the Blue Flame / Champion Cycles rivalary kept her away from The CC shops or Mark Bradley did , she was often the topic of converstion between us when things were quiet in the shop......

JB

I remeber that day with mick and Johnny. That guy on the train running his hands along the walls of the tunnels!!!
We found a good jump under the harbour bridge next to the cannons. We were sailing for miles down the hills. That was one of the best city runs I've ever had.
That pic is Arron for sure. He was a feral kid! lol

Hey, that's a photo of Aaron for sure.

Not sure what the reference to Leigh Casper is about though....

Hmm, I think most people of the era remember Leigh - sure stood out from the crowd. Wonder where she is now? Probably wearing fluffy slippers in the 'burbs

C'mon GUYS,

Where are the Crossriders and the Repco Shockie bikes.

I'm going to have to resort to stealing other people pics to put up.

-Pete.

[ November 28, 2005, 01:41 AM: Message edited by: AussieRampar ]

Hope fully when Mr Porker sends me a Repco shockie I'll have a real cool ride to post up! I have everything ready to go except the F/F !
I dont have any Aussie bikes at all. Only low end US stuff! lol

For a "stocker" the Phase 111 (GTHO ??) Taipan came fully loaded with Japans best alloy components & TRX forks , back in 1981.
Note the front brake lever mounted on the right handgrip. , I _had_ to assemble them like so they could be sold ,must have had something to do with Australian Standard (XXXX.xx.xx,yb) & possible legal issues , the boss & his wife were very firm on this point, they said it had to be that way so that the rider could use his left hand for the rear brakes whilst whilst signalling for a turn with his right hand.The bell had to go on the left hand side as well , it was also painful having to fit all the reflectors to the bike knowing full well that 90% of the ppl who bought them were going to tear them off soon as they got home & swap the brakes over so they could make their hand "signals" with their left hand. The only fun thing to do with the bells was fit to them to other ppl's bikes when they weren't looking then calll them a STOCKER ,& watch them run around looking for tools to take the
embarrassing thing off....


RRP AUD $485 complete in 1981.
To beef it up a bit , $275 for a set of redline Flite Cranks , ~$40+ for a set of GT Pro Bars & ~$55 for a Tuf Neck
lesss a $60 or so as we'd do you a deal on buying the original parts you replaced back.. Not many ppl took up my beef it up options/suggestions when buying a new bike ,US bike stuff like that was so expensive bitd.
I remember the Graphite Tuff's with campy hubs were hung up high on the wall , with a similar price tag on them as the Redline Cranks.
I really need to get my time travel machine working
& figure a way to overcome the paper money & Bank Card credit problem. I'd make $50 a card back then for witholding a stolen or overdrawn/unpaid Bank Card , keeping a "declined" card was worth about a weeks wages , good money was coming if you kept a Bad card away from the owner....It all got spent buying BMX stuff anyway so the boss didn't mind.

Ok guys-you want to see a couple of vintage Aussie crossrider survivors ? For your viewing pleasure- here are my 2 cherished classics - Repco (red )+ Sportsworld(yellow) motocross. Repco was running box bars which looked poor and felt uncomfortable, so I replaced those with later style but still o/s bars. Sportsworld bars were just sanded down and repainted- otherwise both bikes are basically untouched! These old Crossriders look great but the downside is that they are quite heavy and run 3 peice cotter pin cranks.

Love them both. Thats what I hope to accomplish only with motomags on it!

MotoX: WOW.. very very sweetie....

Jetninjablack....found a survivour phase 111 and swaped all the suntour parts onto a mongoose. Still got it downstairs. Thanks for posting that up cause' i enjoyed reading that and looking at those pics. Still have the nitto ss v bars hangin' up.
Motox...very cool bikes...Brings back memories of my neibour that had one...yep...i remember them being heavy and the cotter pins ripping skin and flesh from the inside of my ankles!!! LOL.

rock on Aussie bike thread!!!
Way cool bikes motoX !!! glad to see you scored some OGK's.... lol. I was hoping to meet you at Knox - did you go?

here is my Crossrider Comet 2, unrestored! the "2" meant handbrakes rather than coasterbrake. It does have a new set of og KKT's. $4 at the St Kilda swapmeet the old ones were knackered - stem isn't original issue it's from a C.R. Bmx/Pro.

Oh yeah... c'mon Mr Porker, spill the beans about that Quicksilver mini! tell us all the story behind it...

Cro Moly: Yeah-finally found a pair of those grips(but black still eludes me!).Unfortunately - the gathering - that I was really looking forward to ,and meeting all you guys was the same day as my sisters birthday party. I thought about asking if she might like to go to the shop with me(for some candles) take a wrong turn-end up hopelessly lost and by some freak miracle- end up at the track...? LOL... For a brief second it seemed almost feasible but it was her 36th - 20 years ago that plan might've worked- Dohh!! ..Hopefully there's next year....

Hey Velocidad ! the Quicksilver mini - tri-moly frame, 50 or less made, only known one existing, rechromed, nos sticker set, now in a glass cabinet in my loungeroom.
osamas - it looks bent 'cause its a mini !!!

And it looked like this when i got it-

sweet bike Pete. the chain must have run close to the seat stay?

From MotoX

"These old Crossriders look great but the downside is that they are quite heavy and run 3 peice cotter pin cranks."

If you had one of those crossrider monoshockers you were officially king of the kid in my neighbourhood , this was well before bitd existed.

A guy let would me ride his yellow mono shock BMX a number of times & I always liked the extra weight that it had , with the suspension it gave a _much_ more stable & smooth ride compared on any surface compared to my 3 speed dragster. The guys father raced motorcycles & was a fabricator of some sorts & had done something to the cranks to beef them up , as the bike never sheared off a cotter pin , even when the "grownup" dad's who congregated nearby in the evenings would take it out for a ride on the street or around the track we had in a vacant lot nearby , after a they'd drunk a few of their special drinks that came in a gold can (KB Beer).

As for a sap like me whose father wasn't a engineer/fabricators & didn't fit a rear bicycle cable brake setup to my scooter's rear wheel , another cool innovation for the early-mid 1970's, I'd would shear off cotter pins & the skin on the side of my ankles every 2nd day (so it seemed) & would carry around a small shifter , spanner a few cotter pins & some band aids in a tin box inside my dragsters leather tool bag , even as a ~7 to 10 year old , I'd regularly be repairing my cranks off the road halfway up a steep hill on the way to a friends house & sticking a bandaid onto my ankles...
I'll never know what the guys father did to the cranks on his heavy mono shocker but I never saw _anyone_ fall face forward as a cotter pin sheared off on that heavy mono shocker of his , seemed like he had the equivalent of profile cranks fitted to the euro BB , I saw the bike get retired for the day more than once when the pedals started to get loose & litle ball bearings would fall out , the shock absorbers may have taken out some of the mechanical impact from the cotter pins but the bike took 5 times the hiding that any rigid framed bike did back then.

If coastvl is going to put a set of motomags onto a shocker bike , I'm sure he would loose the skin off one of his ankles on it's first test ride , a set of profile cranks & better brakes would be in order. Once you got a heavy bike like this with an "adult" riding it at full tilt , stopping it in hurry is going to be a problem , pedestrians , small Korean cars & similar things might help slow you down , but youcan't always find them in a hurry.
The Moto Shocker you propose might make a good ram raid machine as well , you could get past the security bollards and push the thing thru a roller shutter or shop front , no problem at all

Thanks for the pics of the monoshocker , they bought back a ton of old memories ,although I won't be restoring one myself , I keep messing with fitting extra weight to the outer rim & tires on a BMX with a lightweight frame. If you can get enough extra weight (& get it balanced) to a pair of 20inch spoked bike wheels , it changes the bikes dynamics drastically......

JB

great read JB.... I hadn't thought about it for years but you brought back a memory of my dad cutting a block of firewood to the right length so we could sit it under the crank arm on my bike whilst he clouted the cotter pin with the back of the axehead... the suckers would stay tight for at least a week then!

Quicksilver project...

The first time I went to see a BMX race, it was at Busaco road in North Ryde and there awas this guy called Mark Bradley (yes, the guy who ended up welding the quicksilver frames) and he had the most enormous aluminium framed monoshock 20" bike that I had (and still have) ever seen.

Quite heavy, with lots of suspenion travel. (I think it had YZ80 forks...

In reality, it was probably 25 years ahead of it's time, as it really looked like today's downhill mountain bikes, but with small wheels.......

It was amazing to watch (and listen to) as it would make a dull whooshing sound when it landed from jumps, not THUD!

Unfortunately, I don't have a photo, but it was NOT a good BMX bike (too heavy and too much energy lost in the suspension dampers) and Mark was sponsored on a Mongoose next time I saw him race.