27.5" wheel Schwinn Stingray
#1
we be rollin'
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27.5" wheel Schwinn Stingray
with large tires like 2.35" (or even 2.6"). What would you think of that? Would it work as an idea? I mean with like more modern features like threadless headset and aluminium frame and 8 speed cassette etc. I mean I sometimes wonder what it would feel like to roll with a banana seat bicycle again if I had an adult-sized one.
#2
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Stingrays were built for wheelies, now if ya' wanna be cool, do a wheelie on a road bike!
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I had a hand-me-down Stingray from approx 1972 to 1975 (10 to 13 years old) when I got a 10-speed. A friend's Dad wanted to try it and when he got on it I saw immediately that I would eventually outgrow it.
Sometime around then I saw a Manta Ray locked up at the drugstore (probably during a candy and comic books run with friends). It was gray with a silver metal-flake banana seat with a shifter on the top tube.
My immediate impression was "cool!" a bigger Stingray! But the proportions were off. The banana seat didn't hang out over the entire rear wheel, and the front bars somehow didn't look right either. It didn't have a fat, flat back slick like my Stingray, but the longitutal racing stripe with the "S" on the seat was cool.
I saw a few more, but none of them had a tall "sissy bar" in the back like the one pictured here.
Looking at this bike now, Schwinn should have used a frame with shorter chain-stays to bring the back wheel in, and a seat-post setback and possibly longer seat to get the seat out over the back of the back wheel. Also, a longer front fork with a smaller 24" wheel and a drum brake (or "motorcycle brake" as we called it) like on the Stingray-based "Krate" bikes (Apple-Krate etc) should have been used.
Of course, all of that would have cost money to produce and raise the price to the consumer.
But, ungainly proportions or not, the photo of the Manta-Ray immediately took me back 45 years or so to the bike I saw at locked up at the drug store in Chicago.
Thanks for sharing!
Sometime around then I saw a Manta Ray locked up at the drugstore (probably during a candy and comic books run with friends). It was gray with a silver metal-flake banana seat with a shifter on the top tube.
My immediate impression was "cool!" a bigger Stingray! But the proportions were off. The banana seat didn't hang out over the entire rear wheel, and the front bars somehow didn't look right either. It didn't have a fat, flat back slick like my Stingray, but the longitutal racing stripe with the "S" on the seat was cool.
I saw a few more, but none of them had a tall "sissy bar" in the back like the one pictured here.
Looking at this bike now, Schwinn should have used a frame with shorter chain-stays to bring the back wheel in, and a seat-post setback and possibly longer seat to get the seat out over the back of the back wheel. Also, a longer front fork with a smaller 24" wheel and a drum brake (or "motorcycle brake" as we called it) like on the Stingray-based "Krate" bikes (Apple-Krate etc) should have been used.
Of course, all of that would have cost money to produce and raise the price to the consumer.
But, ungainly proportions or not, the photo of the Manta-Ray immediately took me back 45 years or so to the bike I saw at locked up at the drug store in Chicago.
Thanks for sharing!
#5
Senior Member
Here’s an old 26er that’s along the same line of thinking. Two sizes too small, expanded with a lay back and risers.
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