Lucky to have rescued this from the trash pile, not that they would have thrown it away but it was just laying in a pile of junk, most of what you see is how it was raced, the f/f cranks wheels seat headset were all together and the other parts were on another race bike of theirs, I asked them what was on it and they pointed out the parts from the Navaho jr hanging in the rafters....no they wouldnt sell me the navajo just yet Any way I have this and a pl24 that the dad raced, I also bought a predator team24 from them, which we later figured out through some conversations was actually my old cruiser!!!! that resto is going to take a while though as I really want it to come out good.

Back to the Bandito, they bought this from a guy who went to the big races here in the northwest(we were having a tripple pointer) and he sold "closeouts" that he bought from factories, well it turns out they were more REJECTS than closeouts as the euro bb on this bike was welded in backwards causing the bb to come lose after about 2 laps!!!! They didnt find this out till the next weekend and he was LONG gone. There were several other frame sets bought that had issues too, the fathers werent happy
Well the one son raced this for the rest of the year then they moved him up to a Navajo the next year and this sat in the garage for the next 26 years till I stopped by their house and brought it home, its truely special to have bikes from your past and the 3 I have from them are very special to me. I was going to have it rechromed but I decided not to as for now I like to be able to touch the real past.

Wow, that is beautiful...I think Bandito's were very underated. I love how the old Hammerhead Uni's got cut off on mini's..such an old school trick!

Great save, congratulations!

wanna sell it?

sure paypal me 40k and I will hand deliver it, other than that, going to hold onto it.

This is a great story. I agree with you about old bikes and links to the past. I do love to see the show bikes built from old bikes looking like new and untouched, but for me it is even better when you have an old ride that you raced decades ago with all of the scars and dings from those long ago days of doing battle.

Mike

Well when I got into this addiction I was floored at how cool it was to actually hold stuff that was similar to what I had as a kid it was a very strange feeling having those smells and tastes flood back in when I would find parts, truely an amazing tactile feeling. Then I built an exact replica of my 83 team24 predator and seeing my son ride it was almost to much to take in, but actually finding the actual bikes I raced against and owned bitd, its beyond words.

really cool jason,i also have an early mini,with the intergrated seat clamp and single dropouts.i love the red pad and original red fork decals,very cool piece of the past.

whats the serial #? Cool find by the way.

I will try to get it before I hang it back up.