OK, so in early 1976 I was a little grom tooling around on a red Schwinn Sting Ray. I was into building models and slot cars and N scale trains and had no clue what bmx was. Then one day at school the local bully/cool kid shows up on a new nickel plated Motomag Mongoose, and my friends and I were blown away. Suddenly I had to have a bmx bike, so I started fixing up my Sting Ray. This isn't the same bike, but it's a pretty close copy to what I started racing on.





December 1976 Schwinn Sting Ray Junior
'77 Ashtabula forks
Schwinn stem and headset
Huffy bars
Schwinn Scrambler grips
Mesinger seat
Schwinn post and clamp
Schwinn Scrambler cranks, sprocket, bb and chain
KKT rat trap pedals
Motomag II rims
Cheng Shin C-183 20 x 2.125 knobbies





Memories...

Love it, those tires make it look like a Dirt Bike!

that looks like a fun ride! i like how the huffy bars have very little sweep to them.
mike

Now that is a proper sweep on those bars!

These are the bikes that grab my attention the most. Nice job Pete!

Super cool, this is what BMX is all about!

"Joe kid on a stingray" That's a nice one.

Thats just got cool written all over it. I love the compact look of it. The rake of the forks makes it look like a Jesse James chopper. Too rad. Makes me want to go get a scrambler, again.

Very nice.I remmeber them well.Me and my friends,Started out with a stock schwinn.Take everything off and make a motocross bike.We used real motorcycle bars on are first bikes.I am redoing one of many schwinns,That I rode back then.The frame is a fastback,ashtabula fork an neck,schwinn bars,troxal rear wheel bendex76,heavy dutty front rim.don't know about tires yet.Or seat.I'm hoping to have it done in about 2 months. Old schwinns don't die.They get cooooooooler! Know matter what is done to them?

Pete,

Nice bike! My brother and I got hand-me-down Schwinn Stingrays from our rich city cousins in 1975 and proceeded to strip 'em down and make dirt bikes out of them. We painted them flat black and put Goodyear Eagle tires on them as soon as they came out, after replacing the stock spkes and rims with 105 ga spokes and standard size rims, of course! Motomags wouldn't come for us until our first Mongoose in 1976.

I knew you had deep BMX roots when we raced cruiser classes in the Florida State Series in the 1990s... now I know why...

Richard Vogt
bmxmountainbiker

very cool Pete.

can you ride it?

Thanks for the comments guys, it was cool to put this one together. I spray bombed my original Sting Ray with Chevy orange in '77 so it would look like a Husqvarna, but I can't bring myself to paint this one. Yet.

Richard, some days those roots feel very, very old...

Randy, I can ride it pretty easily actually, but then again I'm only 5'4"...hell I can ride a pit bike easily.
It actually cruises along pretty well with the longer Scrambler cranks. My biggest problem is getting my kids off of it so I can ride it.

AWESOME!!!!!

cutting edge ....thats where it all started . im building one like it but 16 in cause i found a set of nickle 16 in redline forks.
on any sunday
great seeing ya at rockford bro ....i look forward to showing ya the "mcs" mcs next year.
dion