michaelz28

hey . i'm new to the forum . my story is .... i do HVAC work in lower westchester NY . we got a late call ( 4:00 pm ) of a broken hot air furnace . the homeowner was an elderly gentelman in his early 80s . his wife was also in her 80s and bedridden . when we got there it was 50* in the house and outside it was just north of 0* . if we didn't fix the heat he would have to load his wife in an ambulance and bring her to the hospital . the boss was lucky enough to find a compatable furnace and we went to work . i look next to the furnace and behind a raleigh was the red schwinn . got the furnace on and left with the bike for $40 .

repechage

Go back and give the nice old guy a C note.

michaelz28

i fixed his furnace at 4:30(after working 8 hours) and didn't get done untill 9:00 and kept his 80 year old wife from being packed up in the 0* cold and brought to the hospital . i gave him 50 he gave me 10 back . ripping an old furnace out and retrofitting a new one in 5 hours is no small feat .

seedsbelize 

Every good deed deserves favor. Or something like that.

Pompiere

That Schwinn is nice! When I was 10, that was the bike I really wanted, but could only afford a Huffy.

dweenk

You don't need to pay the guy more. You showed up in his time of need, got it settled, and probably paid what he had paid for his kid's bike back in the day. If I were you, he would get priority service in the future.

michaelz28

Actually that model was listed at 76 dollars . The reason I never had one . I always got sears and robucks .

OTS 

Welcome to the forum.
Nice score.

Metacortex

Very cool, that's a '69 Sting-Ray with a 3-speed Stik-Shift, here is the catalog page: https://waterfordbikes.com/SchwinnCat...0/1969_24.html

shelbyfv

Cool bike and story. Stop by and check on the old folks sometime....

DiegoFrogs

I often wonder what kinds of gems folks like yourself in those sorts of service-related jobs find in homes. For every story like this, though, I imagine there are twenty five more about you inhaling dusty fiberglass and spiders in a steaming hot attic!

CustomSteel

Nice!

Siu Blue Wind

LOL Yeah me too. I finally got my stingray a few years ago. Mine is a basic stingray jr though.

r0ckh0und 

Nice Score........I found a '69 a couple of years ago. Answered a CL ad for late '70's Letour, guy turned out to be a scrapper, he let me look around.........I ended up leaving with 5 bikes. One was the '69, literally laying under 6' of scrap metal. My proudest rescue to this day.......Oh wait, this other time, this other scrapper let me dig through his trailer and I found this...........

Cache

Welcome to the group from one Westchester resident to another. In my experience, good HVAC guys are under appreciated. And I'm sure you're no stranger to bad attitudes in that neck of the woods. Nice Schwinn for a good price, what I would call instant karma.

michaelz28

There is a lot of stuff I see . I usually don't say a word . I work in one of the richest areas in the county . Between harrison , rye , and rye brook , Scarsdale NY there is Greenwich Connecticut, cos cob and old Greenwich . I'm in the bacements and attics of hundred year old mansions . My intention wasn't to flip the ray . I always wanted one . The seat should be white and when I get that straightened out it will match my 73 Z28/RS which is red with a white vinyl roof and stripes . It seems the standard sting ray 3 speed( it cost as much new as most of the deluxe or fastbacks ) is a pretty unusual bike as most I see on eBay are krate bikes or deluxe or super deluxe or fastback sting rays . This one is bare bones .

dddd

Good score, Michael, and good story too.

When I lived in White Plains in the 80's, I used to scope out newspaper ads on the weekend or whenever I had time.

I made quite a few trips out to CT, looking at, buying and restoring old two-stroke-powered motorcycles.

I eventually ended up buying and racing a Kawasaki H2 drag-bike, and then made dozens and dozens of trips to the various drag strips instead of time spent looking for bikes.

Sometimes people would approach me at the track, telling me of another Kawasaki 3-cylinder for sale, and when I moved back to CA in 1991, I had 8 or 9 of them in my rental truck.

I sold them all after the Northridge earthquake destroyed my house and garage, and got good money. I took up serious cycling at that point, then bicycle racing, and began collecting and restoring vintage bikes within a few short years, finally moving to silicon valley in 1997.

Looking back, 1997 to 2007 were a gold mine of thrift-store and garage-sale bike finds, but have since turned up many on Craigslist over the last 6 years or so.
I almost never find Sting-Rays for some reason, at least not in a condition that I would want. Yours looks to have spent most of it's life indoors, protected from the elements, so I presume will not be repainted.
The white seats are available as repro items, and the 3-speed bits are easy to find.
I hope you are not too tall to ride it. My adult-life "Stingray" had to be a 1961 Traveler with Ape bars and 2-speed Bendix, but it feels like I'm back in the saddle on my '67 Stingray 2-speed when I'm on it, except that I don't actually do wheelies on this thing.

oddjob2

I was going to say most of Westchester is virtually the gold coast of metro NYC! That nice old man you took good care of won't miss $60. And senior citizens appreciate honest tradesmen and service people. Although my parents live miles and dollars away from Westchester in NNJ, my father tips restaurant servers very well and gave the snow plow guy a 100% gratuity the other day.

The Golden Boy 

Sweet!


I appreciate our HVAC guy- I was kind of disappointed when a new kid came when we had our furnace checked in fall. Perfectly nice kid, I just really enjoyed shooting the **** with the normal guy every year.

One thing that amazes me about service guys- you go into people's homes, into the places they don't let normal visitors visit. I'd imagine most places are decent, if but a touch dirty. But there are *those* places... the people who lock their dogs into the basement. The people that have 50 cats. And you have to deal with that...

michaelz28

Actually I rarely get tipped . We have a select group of customers . It's not my doing I work for someone (I'm a union sheet metal worker) . If it was up to me we would be more diverce . Anyway , I see a lot of neat stuff , but most of it I would sound stupid even asking and my boss would get pissed . I'm here to work , not play picker . Everybody is cool with it and we did a solid favor for a new customer . Good site with lots of traffic . Any more sting ray people out there ?

michaelz28

dddd , You have a Kawi 2 stroke triple ??? I tried to buy a lightly dumped 77 750 mark IV purple from it original owner in 78 . Want a sting ray for a bike ? ( JK ) .

dddd

I have sometimes regretted selling my old race bike and street bike, but not all the "extras" and "spares" that eventually took up so much garage space.

The street H2 that I sold in 1994 would sell for three times the amount that I sold it for!

Not the race bike though, which I got a very fair price for after three full seasons of traveling the east coast "national" circuit's racing schedule.

Here's me on the 1972 H2 that I had previously used to earn a #4 plate in 1989, in the IHRA/AMA Super-Gas points chase. It was a scruffy home-built, but with a Paul Gast engine, 40mm Lectron carbs and the aluminum wheelie bars that I designed. It had very high compression, so needed 114-octane fuel to run without knocking/pinging:

michaelz28

I loved the sound and the power of the 2 stroke triple . As I recall the one I almost had was equipped with basani chambers with no baffles . Another nice 2 stroke Back in the day was that 2 cylinder yamaha 350 6 speed ( I think it was the RD 350 ? ) . Back to the ray . I polished it up and it's not to bad and the paint is staying . It's pretty good , just chips .check the date code on the tires and both are 2/9 . The bike is 1/9 . No rot on either . The bike must have been left for dead early on . It seems to shift good as the cable came and I filled the hub with oil .

dddd

I hope you're enjoying good memories, riding the StingRay. It's been a very long time since anyone brought in a 3-speed for me to work on, mainly because it's so hilly here in the foothills.

I flipped a 1963 Hercules 3-sp a couple of years ago, made the old man as happy as I've ever seen a customer. He rides it out of town though, where it's flatter.

michaelz28

Well not riding it yet .. There is like 2 feet of snow out there . I'm trying to get stuff sorted for the spring . I'd like to get a vintage bike carrier for the camaro . Could you imagine a red / white 73 Z28/RS with a red / white 69 stik shift ray on some kind of trunk carrier .