Got this fram eover the weekend and was wondering a bout a couple of things. I know the Sting is know for brazed welds, however the one I got is a bit odd. This one seems to have a brazed head tube, and Tig welds everywhere else. At some point did Schwinn do this, or is this some kind of repair jobby?

Pics are realy bad but to crappy camera.





Also snagged this frame and have know clue what it is. Seemd to have patterson style dropouts but Cant seem to fine anything else that looks like it.

That's the first time I've seen one mixed tig and brazed.

I have one from what I think is 1985 that is completely tig welded (it's a complete bike that's for sale btw).

If Ted Carl pipes in you may get your answer.

the sting was replaced w/ a preditor. It had a 5 inch head tube and trioval tubing. It was 100% heli arc welded. This brazed head tube/heli arc hybrid may have been a transition model
Mx Mug

i read 1983 was the first tig sting .i have one in my bikes at the museum .
round head badge with screws .
dion

GP there is a HUGE thread about Stings on the Schwinn.com site. Might be some info there.

Yeah I saw that..... what can I say, I'm lazy! I'll look at it more tonight.

Nothing wrong with Lazy... I'm a big fan of lazy!

I have 1983 Sting that looks just like that with it only brazed at the headtube and is Tig'd everywhere else. It was a warranty frame from when I cracked my '81 at the seat stays. If I remember correctly, I was told it was a Predator Sting. But I can't be sure how true that is. That was along time ago............Hope that helps
KMS

Dugan Neil has one and he told me that he was told that it was a team issued frame.
But we should wait till Ted speaks.

The Mystery frame looks to be a "Excaliber", which had some thing to do w/ Badd & Co.

I don't know if it was a team issued frame per say, but I have two of those with the brazed front and tiged everywhere else. Now they were given to us on the National(bike shop) team in '84. Some of the guys were also given all tig welded frames. These were all Predator Sting Models.
Now I was told the front was brazed in the US and then shipped to Taiwan where the rear of the bike was assembled. This was a transition to making them all over seas or at least thats what we were told.

OK, OK, quite now. I think Ted is about to speak, I hear him clearing his throat.

Ted...Ted... any minute now I'm sure....

i thought it may have been one of these Sx2000's but the serial is the on the drop. Sx's have them on the head tube.

the second frame looks a bit like an Astron ??????

looks like a early badd . just seen an orange one on the museum
dion

Bump for Ted.
I know he's around here somewhere, I just saw him.

lol... Sure, why not.

Yep it's an 83.

The early ones were TIG welded all the way around, including the head tubes.

Ted Guilmette broke the head tube off of a TIG Sting at my home track in mid to late 82. That one was a prototype at the time. The TIG welds wouldn't hold, and defeated the whole tri-oval design's purpose of spreading the loads, and providing a smooth transition of stress load throughout the smooth brazed welds.

He and I talked about the future of Stings, and how they were having this done overseas, and that they were failing.

Real hand built Paramount Stings were still available at that point. But I was disgusted at the prospects of such a beautifully designed frame as The Sting being outsourced to china and cheapened. I was glad it broke, because I thought it was ugly, and a stupid idea. I hoped that the "Idiots in the leather chairs" would see this idea sucked, and that they would not produce them that way. Even me, a 16 year old kid, understood very well, how the brazing and ovalizing was supposed to work in harmony to distribute load and keep things light, and I thought they were being morons.

It was one of those revelations for me. I learned that big business does not always make decisions based on intelligence, but by idiots sitting in a leather chair.

Schwinn was notorious for things like that, and I knew it. They were always 2 years behind the curve on a lot of things, and you could often tell, that the guys making the decisions just didn't "get it". They had no clue. Yet, when you looked at a Sting, they totally knew what they were doing! ....If you look though the catalogs, and consider what year they were produced, it's easy to see what I am saying.

The topic came up by chance tonight, when my friend stopped over and was looking at some catalogs posted on my web site.

...Here it's 1981-82, and we have a "Sting" ad, and it features the handlebars pulled back like a little kid's bike. ...Flagship, Handmade, Paramount Built, Race Bike, ....shown set up like a Huffy for an 8 year old, being sold at K-mart. Duh, ...Idiots sitting in a leather chair.


California lite pads had been the only pad people had been using for 3 years, and they were still selling heavy vinyl snap pads. Duh, ...Idiots sitting in a leather chair.

Paramount division never made a dime. They sold dreams. The best of the best. The Sting; "Hey, let's cheapen it and put crappy farmed out overseas labor welds on them." Let's destroy the Paramount room, as they are only a drain on the company, not a talented resource of ingenuity and engineering. Just a bunch of dumb bike builders, grunts, who don't know anything. They don't even know how to sit in a leather chair, and shoot rubber bands into the garbage can, and scheme artificial savings on paper. Duh, ...Idiots sitting in a leather chair.

It's what happens when people on the floor, that know what they are doing, get over ridden by bean counters in polyester that have never built, nor designed, nor fixed anything in their lives. AKA, ...Idiots sitting in a leather chair. These idiots sitting in a leather chair, have destroyed more businesses and jobs than any other plague in this country.

The Sting suffered the same fate. They didn't care about the pride in ownership that Stings commanded. They didn't care about the respect they had earned with them. They only cared that the welds were cheaper in Taiwan, and they only cared that they were just barely strong enough so that they would not break, and get them sued. They did just enough R&D to determine that TIG welds on the head tubes failed miserably, so they still had to braze them.

However, they did not take into account the loss of interest by loyal customers, in a frame that had been so obviously cheapened, in an effort to gain the executives bigger bonuses. Any Sting owner on this planet could see that there was "less for me, more for you", by putting cheap Taiwan welds on them. Not one person on the planet ever said, "Oh good, the beautiful Sting flagships have ugly, crappy, welds that were made in Taiwan on them now". ..."Maybe I should trade in my genuine hand built work of art, and perfection, for a cheap knock off?". ... Nope, they just switched brands and said "Enjoy your leather chair....Idiot".

On a personal level, The TIG Sting was actually an important turning point for me in racing. After seeing the prototypes in mid "82, and seeing them fail, I was no longer as proud to be representing the brand. I wanted to jump ship, but it seemed all the ships were heading to Taiwan at that point. I was disgusted with politics in racing, among other things, by late '82 and I had lost my drive, and utterly gave up, and handed over my number by not showing up at races late in the '82 season. I quit after about a half a dozen races into '83. I saw and heard things coming for the company which I was supposed to be supporting that was just "too dumb to be true".

So I never saw a TIG sting in the stores that I remember, and I was never sure if they even actually produced them until recent years.

I walked away from BMX early in '83 clean and quick. But I did know that The Stings "Sucked" now, via word of mouth. "They were just a cheap overseas POC now" was the word I got on the street, and I lost interest on many levels. The push by Schwinn to make cheap Taiwan made Stings (and bikes altogether), being one of them.

To this day I dislike "bean counting idiots in leather chairs in cubicles", that don't look to the future, don't look to quality, don't look at the good of the workers, and don't look to the good of the country, and have no clue about the products they are selling, nor the customers they are selling to. Rather, they only have a short vision of what they can buy with the money from the bonus check they will get whey the save the company some money on paper in the short term future.

Stings were the epitome of long term vision, by people that cared about building quality bikes. Built by people who knew what it meant to be passionate and loyal to what they build and sell. Unfortunately, their talented hands were tied, by people who obviously had no clue. Marc Muller had the power to build the ultimate BMX racing frame and fork set, but still couldn't control the other divisions that stuck cheap brakes, and heavy pads on them. Nor could he control the photographers making fools out of his handy work in the ads, by being ignorant buffoons. Because of things like this, I am certain Marc Muller is happy as a clam in the mud having more control of the quality and visions of what he produces at Waterford Cycles now. (No idiots in leather chairs messing up his handy work, lol)

TIG Stings are the exact opposite. They are the absolute icon of the failure of big business in this country, in my mind, to this day. They were one of the first great teachers (to me) about "Idiots sitting in a leather chair" that don't know what they are selling, or why, or how to market it", only that it is cheaper to exploit third world cheap labor for personal gain. Damn the long term visions of quality and greatness. "...Where's my new yacht? I ordered it 3 freaking days ago!"

So there is the answer. The brazed head tubes were only there because that is how the bike was designed to be built, and would fail if built any other way. The rest of the welds, they just got away with it. They saved a dime per copy by doing it, and lost the whole customer base doing it. But the guy that made the decision to do it, no doubt, got a big fat bonus check for saving the company so much money with his wizdom. He bought his yacht, and doesn't care that everyone else, including the workers, the company, and the customers, that all lost in the deal. That guy still can't ride a bike, nor fix the sails on his yacht, but he knew then, and still knows now, that sending The Sting to Taiwan for ugly cheap welding was a great idea.

One other interesting thing, which I have yet to prove or disprove on those welds. ...In fact, I KNOW they were TIG welding them on the prototypes from direct conversation BITD. However, I suspect that they may have actually been MIG welded in production. The object was making them cheaper. MIG is cheaper, and less labor intensive than TIG. ....Robotic cheap even... nowadays. ... So truth be known. TIG is TRUTH on the prototypes. But speculative on the production bikes. MIG may actually be the way they were done. TIG welding adds filler rod by hand using a tungsten electrode that does not melt. MIG just feeds the wire in and melts the electrode as it goes.


Anyone know anything about Ted Guilimette nowadays? I know he was involved with this whole fiasco, and I have long wanted to hear his .02 on the subject, as well as just hearing from him altogether at VBMX.