Mongoose Pro-Class Wheelset Mystery

There are a lot  of interesting things about this build. What we have is an old school Mongoose with new school Crupi forks, I am guessing the bars are also Crupi, and some sort of vintage alloy cranks. The most interesting part however, is the all blue Mongoose Pro Class wheels. 

 

What makes these Pro Class so interesting? Hmmmm….as far as I know, Pro Class wheels were only ever available in three finishes: regular aluminum, polished aluminum, and a smoke colored anodized (or some other type pf coating process). So how in the heck are there a set of blue ones on this build?

I started searching around trying to find out if I was wrong about Pro Class only being available in the three finishes mentioned above, and everything I found said I was correct. I also leaned that Mongoose had contracted with two separate rim manufacturers to have the hoops constructed: Araya and Sumo. Some of the production run from both manufacturers utilized existing rims, so you could find Araya or Sumo actually stamped into the spoke side of the hoop. I'm guessing the later runs are the ones that don't have the stamps. 

Anyway, I just could not find any evidence that they were ever available in blue. 

These wheels, if you are unfamiliar with them, have a large hole drilled out between every spoke hole in order to make them incredibly light, and they utilize a metallic rim strip with a glossy color coating which which you can see through the rim holes in order to give them some color. Below you can see the rim strip in action. This one is set up so that the red side shows through the holes. You can also see the unused blue side. You could change the color scheme of your wheelset just by flipping over the proprietary rim strip.

In my search to find out whether the rims for Pro Class were ever available in blue, I came across an eBay ad which had this set of wheels:

These are pretty much the exact wheels used on the frankenbike Mongoose build! If these were custom coated, clearly they were professionally done. They look great. Not only that but check out the valve stem home graphics:

Very nice right? It uses what looks like the correct font and definitely gives them an authentic factory production feel. However, along the way I couldn't find any other pics of Pro Class with this valve stem hole graphics. All I could find were a totally different rounded rectangle style.

So I'm perplexed? Are these customs? Am I just totally mistaken that they were never available in colors and if so, why can't I find any advertising or supporting evidence that they were?

The only downside of the whole mystery is that by this point in the game with wheelsets, manufacturers had wised up and started leaving the sidewalls uncoated since caliper brake shoes would end up destroying the finish pretty quickly, and the frankenbike above def has handbrakes. 

I would be glad to hear any info you may have about whether pro-Class were ever available in colors, and if not, any info on who is making the custom refinished ones would be rad! 

I had also wanted to get into the crankset on this bike, but I can't tell a lot about what manufacturer they are from via the pic above. If you have any info on that I'd love to know. Are they from the  Campagnolo BMX groupo? Are they some sort of repurposed track bike crankest?

Tracer Finn Boosting a One Hander

The caption says one handed 360 degree aerials but I don't think that is what Tracer Finn is doing in this picture. Regardless that photo is great because it shows a unique angle and direction of travel. He is absolutely boosting it for a jump from this particular era. More and more I am liking the classic era of BMX these days when it really was about imitating what was happening in actual Motocross. Sooner or later I'll do a Bob Hannah appreciation post and hopefully find a bunch of pics of BMX riders doing "Hannah's"

Montgomery Ward - Open Road BMX Shaped Object

Just remembering this "Open Road" BMX bike sold by Montgomery Ward. It was a fall day and my dad took me to Golden Ring Mall to see a movie. I'm not 100% sure but I want to say it was "Hangar 18" which was about the government covering up a collision that the Space Shuttle had with an alien spacecraft or something. If I remember correctly later in life I'd get flashbacks of the parallels between Hangar 18 and the Roswell UFO crash tale, in particular the Blue Room, which was supposedly the room where the aliens were kept, and was later memorialized by the sound system called The Orb. All of this is very loose as far a memories go.

Anyway, back to the bike. Before the movie we took a stroll through the MonkeyWards and went to the bike section. Dad knew I was going to ask for a bike for Christmas becayse I -always- asked for a bike, so I guess he figured he would get ahead of the game, and let me pick out the exact one I wanted. This was not the exact one I wanted. This one is:

Unfortunately this was out of our price range. In fact at this point in my life I had never even been to a real bike shop and seen a Redline in real life. But on this particular day it didn't matter, I was stoked that I at least got to pick out the exact bike I wanted from the row of stingray clones and ten speeds. This was the only thing even close to what I needed. Boy was I happy when he walked up to the counter and put it on lay-away!

The next few months were torture, waiting for Christmas day and my new ride. Soon enough the day came and I couldn't wait to take out my new bike and check out the other new bikes that all the neighborhood kids had gotten. Whether mine was nicer or not I was sure I was the only one with this model.

Overall, I had a blast on this bike, thrashing the bejeezus out of it until some point about mid summer when I cracked the rear Lester Allow Mag. This was an interesting failure...the bike would still roll, but it made a noise that said "when this thing finally fails completely, you are gonna end up bloody and hurt. I listened to that message and soon enough traded something or other for some spoked wheels from Crazy Gary, the neighborhood tinkerer and electronic genius.

Ended up getting a bit more lifespan out of it and of course as it grew closer to Christmas I started thinking about what I was going to replace it with, so it soon faded into oblivion like a zillion bikes before and after. Now that I'm, older it is very easy to see that this thing was most likely made in the same factory as the Huffy Pro Thunder series. Open Road, you were not the best bike I the world but I'm fond of the times we had together.

Getting Microscopic with Vintage Buff, Duke and 944

What a rad photo! Let's take a moment and examine it a bit closer.
Making the leap is one of my personal childhood heroes Mike Buff, who we all know and love from the Bicycle Motocross Action Trick Team. There is no way to positively ID if he is riding his trademark white PK Ripper in this shot, but he often ran Baby Blue Landing Gear forks with the PH frame, and obvs whatever forks he is running here are white, so who knows. I don't see any fork standers so I don't think he had switched to riding a Hutch Trick Star when this photo was taken. Another timestamp for this pic is that the bike clearly does not have the Potts Modification as the front brake cable is clearly visible. He is roosting a pretty good launch to be landing on flat ground though. Almost certain that those are white ACS Z-rims he is running. 

The car is obvs a Porsche 944. Not much to say about that except that one of the riders I grew up with had one when we were in high school and I always thought t was a pretty sweet ride. 

The person leaning against the car is Dana Duke, who was at the time sort of the Flavor Flav of the BMX and Motocross scene from what I remember. I'm pretty sure he was an announcer for lots of BMX trick shows, and also heavily involved in the motorcycle motocross scene. But if I remember correctly he was much more than just an announcer and did all kinds of things to help promote and generate hype for both BMX and Motocross. Unfortunately he is also remembered as being the driver in a car/train accident than killed three passengers that were with him at the time, all of them heavy hitters in the motocross scene. Last I heard The Duke is still alive and shows up at events from time to time sporting some rad vintage Oakley gear. Not sure if he is actually doing any announcing or is affiliated with marketing of hype generating though. If you know of any up to date news post in the comments. 

Beer Bottle Opener Project - Monty the Rat

There is a bracket on my beach cruiser rat bike which originally held a reflector. Said reflector was removed within minutes of rescuing the bike, but the bracket has just sat there ever since. So I decided to try putting it to good use by hacking a regular old bottle/can opener combo.

First I bought the opener.

Sawed off the parts I didn't need. Notice the twist at the bottom. I used a vice to squash the twist out

Next I used the vice and a hammer to bend it to the shape I needed. 

Here is a view of the bracket on which the opener would be mounted

Next I drilled out the hole for the nut and bolt. This was probably the most tricky part. We have a drill press, but there wasn't a good way to clamp the opener that would allow proper hole placement. So the first hole was a bit of a compromise, and ended up not working at all. I gave it a second try, which included unbending part of the L shape for the drill chuck to have better vertical access. I didn't take the time to grab a pic of the drill press and clamp mechanism, but I assure you, this was the sketchiest part of the whole job. The drill press itself is fine, but my clamp mechanism was not pretty. IN the end it worked. Filed down the flash left over from the drill operation then headed to Home Depot and grabbed the bolt, flat washer, lock washer and nut I needed. Below is a pic of the finished result.

Next I tested it using a glass bottled Coke. Unfortunately it did not work as well as I would like. I had to work the bottle at an angle which made me end up spilling a bit out of the top once the cap came off. I also don't like that this particular opener ended up looking just like a reflector bracket! So, I am considering this opener version 1.0, and will continue working to refine both the look and functionality. All in all it was still a fun way to spend an hour or two and I literally spent less than $6.00 on the whole rig. Just want to get a version dialed in enough to work well for Southern Surf Stomp 2018.

Vintage BMX Nutbuster Pad Action

Installed a California Lite Perry Kramer Signature single stem pad on Monty the cruiser. I think I'm going to get a top tube pad also. Before and After pics below.

Getting Microscopic with Curb Dog Maurice Meyer

Let's examine this classic Bob Osborn photo. You know Bob. He ran a magazine called Bicycle Motocross Action. We can talk about that later.

For now though, let's get microscopic this 1984 photo of Maurice Meyer of Curb Dogs fame, going full on back to basics style with a straight up front endo, most likely at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. That is the end of the obvious stuff.

The first oddity you may see are the brake levers. They look all motocross-ey, like they came off a dirt bike. Let me decode them for you. He is running Dia-Compe Tech 3's, but he has added a few mods. First off is the red plastic tubes that are squeezed onto the lever portion. I had these things on a bunch of bikes. They basically beef up the overall diameter of the actual lever, which makes for a bit more comfortable and thus tighter pull. Next he is running some kind of rubber dust/dirt guard over the top most portion of the lever and the clamp. These accesories probably did come from motocross. Never ever ever seen this exact model marketed to bike riders. Terrycable had something similar, a flexible plastic guard that just sort of flapped over the middle of the lever and clamp.

Working downward we have the CW bars and number plate. I've seen racing number plates used for freestyle by putting your actual name on the front, but this is the first and only time I've seen one used to promote a "crew". Yeah man, SF guys always future forward.

He is riding a Kuwahara racing frame (1984 was just before every company in the world came out with a dedicated freestyle model) and running a Hutch tall headset lock. Maurice gave it a personal touch with the MM initials under the head tube sticker.

The dual color Dia-Compe MX 1000 brakes are an interesting detail that may have snuck past you though. This was a common mid eighties mod where you got a front and rear brake, each two different colors, and took them apart, then reassembled them half one color, half the other. Easy Peasy! If you took the time to do that you probably also took the time to put lubrication between the brake arm contact points, and all of the associated washers and spacers. This made the already strong classic brake set work even better. After a while I started using 900's instead of 1000's. The only difference was the tire clearance, the 900's were smaller. Ah, the good old days before V-Brakes. I hate V-brakes.

Did you notice that he is running a Cycle Pro Snakebelly tire on the front? Ha...he has it mounted backwards.

The whole rig is "pre-potts mod" which means he can only turn the handlebars a certain amount before the front brake arm rams into the frame. Potts, which allowed the front brake cable to route through a hollow stem bolt, and allowed turning the bars 360 degrees, hadn't been invented yet and we were quite a way from rotors/gyros at this time. Don't let that stop you, Maurice didn't.

That's pretty much all there is except I'm wondering if the guy on the PK Ripper behind and to the right of him is Brian Scura. I'm not trying to hate on Brian Scura but he is a guy who was able to make an already "safe" sport so sanitized that...well I don't even know how to explain it. Actually I can explain it but I'll make that an individual post, because this one is already long enough.

Beach Cruiser Klunker / Rat Rod Project pt.1 - Coaster Brake Chronicles & Truing Front

Little by little I've started to attack the mechanical issues on Monty the Klunker/RatRod/BoardBike. Something I was really suprised about was how loose the front spokes were. The rear spokes aren't that loose at all, and the front wheel of a beach cruiser isn't exactly a high stress area, so who knows how they got that way. Maybe there was a basket attached to the front at some point which supported some heavy lifting, I dunno. Anyway I got it sorted out proper. Started out just tightening the spokes while it was still in the fork, but eventually stopped being lazy and broke out Ye Olde Truing Stand. What you don't see here is that I took a pretty good amount of time to wire brush the rust out of the inside of the rim, which surely would have caused some flats.

Days went by and the weekend came. The next and probably most major mechanical issue to be attacked was the rear hub / Bendix coaster brake. The hub was not engaging in either direction, it would not drive or brake, and turning the sprocket in either direction was crazy hard. Thankfully it was not completely seized up though. During my time at Golden Ring Bicycle Shop back in Baltimore, I repaired a zillion Bendix and Shimano coaster brakes, and usually it was a case of the parts being fine, but the lubrication inside of the hub being completely gummed up and making all the parts actually stick together. My boss back in Baltimore told me that the reason this happens is that grease actually contains a solvent as one of the ingredients and eventually the solvent will eat away at the actual portions of the grease that make it slippery, leaving a sticky mess that can actually harden considerably if left to do so. I was pretty sure this was the issue with this hub. I hadn't overhauled a coaster in 20 years but it was time to dig in.

Not sure what the exact model of Bendix coaster brake this is. The bike is from 1981. If you need to ID a Bendix coaster brake hop over to this site and take a look.

The axle threads are in great condition so the nuts came off fine which is a bonus. I can't tell you how many of these things I've had to work on where the axles have been victims of many accidents or the bike just being thrown down when some kid was done riding it, so the threads are jacked up out near the edges. That always makes it a pain in the butt. I got lucky I guess. Twenty teeth on the rear sprocket.

Snap ring and dust cover of the drive side came off easily. The next part is where I started to run into some difficulty. I wanted to remove everything by loosening the cone and lock nut on the drive side. For some reason I remember that this was the easier way to do this repair when it came to the reassembly phase. Unfortunately I am not equipped with cone wrenches that will fit this wheel, so I kind of had to work with what it would allow me to do. Of course this meant that it wanted to be disassembled by the brake arm side. Okay, I can deal with that I guess. The next problem was that I do not have one of these:

For those of you that don't know, this tool is called an Axle Vice. The concept here is that the aluminum inner pads are softer than the steel axle, so you can put this tool in a bench vice, then insert the axle in it, then clamp down as hard as you want because the aluminum will bite into the threads but will not crush them. Awesome right?! However, since I am a Low Budget Soul Rider, I don't have every freakin tool under the sun, so I had to improvise. Hmmmm...let's see...maybe I have some aluminum around here somewhere...let me me think. Oh right, I have a BUNCH of aluminum...

Aluminum BEER CANS. That's right, I folded over a can a few times and used just enough pressure on the vice to get it to work. The whole thing had me laughing at my geniusness. NOTE: I do NOT recommend trying this yourself. Spring for the axle vice it will be worth it. If I ever have to do another axle related repair I'm gonna. This approach was actually pretty risky and I could have really cost myself some time and money if I'd have screwed up the threads.

Now we are starting to get into the meat of things. That white stuff on the inside of this part is basically a hard crumbly powder that used to be nice slippery white lithium grease. The brown stuff was so sticky I am not actually using any pinch pressure to hold it up, it is just sticking to my thumb and finger.

The inside of the hib was ridiculous. Everything just sticking together like crazy. The pic above is the brake arm side. The pic below is the drive side. It took a while to get the drive side disassembled because there is a component inside that has some very deep threads which slides a mechanism horizontally inside the hub to activate the brake or drive the wheel. That component had become stuck in a position where the threads wouldn't egage. I finally had to break out some car brake cleaner to get the pieces loos enough to move at all, and then had to work at it about another 10 mins to get them apart. Very relieved once that part was over with, because after that I was sure no parts were actually broken.

Here are pretty much all the parts except the axle and brake are side bearing (which was still in the vice) before cleaning.

The brake shoes. yeah that "grease" is over 20 years old, it is disgusting.

The component above with the super deep threads is actually three pieces and threads into the component in the top right. These were the pieces that were stuck together so bad that I had trouble getting them out.

The hub after using car brake cleaner to free the stuck parts, but before deep cleaning it. The brown gunk on the inner ridge got totally removed.

A close up view of my LBSR Beer Can Axle Vice® after use. Now to the Cleaning and reassembly phase.

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My brother recently replaced practically the entire top end of his truck motor, and as part of that project he added a real deal parts washer to the workshop. This thing is super rad. It pumps a continuous flow of solvent into the basin and you can get the parts super scrubbed without using a bunch of aerosol crap. In this case we are using kerosene. Had to be kind of careful, super flammable. I did wheel it outside though to lessen the fumes.

Here are the parts after cleaning. Note that I was not going for a full on restoration type cleaning here. That would be outside the scope of this project. Keeping the patina of the old parts is important to the rat-roddiness of this build, but I wanted all of the working surfaces to be dialed in, and it worked out well. 

Remember I was saying that I wanted to take it apart from the drive side because putting it back together would be much easier? Yeah well, I was right. When you do it from the drive side, you can sort of pre-assemble the inner and the brake shoes using new grease to sort of stick everything together, then slide the entire mechanism inside the hub in one shot. Unfortunately it is not that easy if you have disassembled it the way I had to. i would love to have gotten some photos of the reassembly process, but by this time I had had a bunch of beers, and once I started putting new grease on everything, I didn't want to get it all over the camera, because my fingers where covered in it. Also, getting it back together from the non-drive side was very tricky and once I got the brake shoes in place I had to keep the momentum going because if just one of them would move out of place I'd have to take the whole thing back apart and start the reassembly over. So I kept on pushing.

Sorry the final phot is a little blurry. By this time I was a little blurry too. But even in the blurry pic you can tel that it is much cleaner than when I started. I still had to put on the brake arm and lock nut at this point.

When it was all done I picked it up and checked it to see if the drive would engage, and if the brakes worked. Totally solid!

So, I can still rock a coaster brake overhaul after all these years. Yeah!

Beach Cruiser Klunker / Rat Rod Project pt.1 - The Finding

I've been wanting to build a rat rodded out cruiser or a klunker MTB for at least a few years year, so I have been keeping my eye out for a base bike. In 2013 I had found a schwinn back in the woods at Haw Creek, but itwas just waaaay too rusted out to recover so it ended up on the junk pile. Time passed. Then the other day on the way to work I saw a beach cruiser just laying in the grass in front of a Rite Aid on a busy intersection on my way to work. I immediately pulled into the parking lot and scoped it out. Although it wasn't clear how or why the bike got there, it was definitely not rideable and I suspect it was put there on purpose for someone to find. That someone was me! I needed to get to work but I was able to call my Dad and wait for him to arrive with the truck and take it home.

 It's a Murray Montery 26". It was manufactured in Lawrenceburg, TN approximately 1981 and loads of the parts are also made In USA. Here's what it looked like brand new...

It's actually not in to bad condition compared to the Schwinn. I was laughing when I found it because it had a bunch of sticker bush remnants all tangled up in it. Below are a few pics of the general condition/rust/patina.

Wow a 3/8" front wheel axle with safety washers. I'm gonna need to find a supplier who carries Wald parts I guess.

The rear sprocket won't engage or brake. It's a Bendix coaster brake, which I have rebuilt hundreds of, but not for at least 25 years (wow I'm old!). I'm pretty sure this one can be recovered. Usually when one is behaving like this it is because the grease inside has broken down and is actually sticky, so it is not allow the parts inside to move freely, and the brake/drive mechanism gets stuck between the drive side and the brake side. Future post will be the disassembly cleaning and reassembly. I can't believe I am saying this but I am actually looking forward to it!

The rust on the frame is perfect Rat Rod bizness. Not too much, not too little.

Here you can see the bent pedal on the non drive side.You can also see that the crank Hanger tube isn't really a tube! It is a rolled piece of sheet metal. The part towards the back that looks like a seam is in fact just that. Murray, I am sure you did this as a cost saving measure but it was pretty dumb. I got a good laugh out of the kickstand being the part of the bike that is in the best condition.

CAUTION: This bicycle is NOT designed for stunt riding or Moto-cross Track USE.

The first step of the process was to see if I could crack all of the different nits and bolts free. This one went waaaaay better than the Schwinn, on which I never got a single nut to crack. Monty was pretty cooperative though. I was thinking the hardest would be the big crank nut, but it came loose with practically no trouble after just a bit of wire brushing and adding some penetrating oil. I still haven't taken it completely off but I got it far enough to know it will not be a problem. The seat post came out with no problems.

The tubes of course are not holding air, but that was expected. The spokes on the front wheel are reaaaallly loose which is kind of strange, but it'll give me an excuse to break out the truing stand. Since I was messing around with it yesterday I figured I would do a bit of quick prototyping with some parts. Check out how simply swapping to a different seat changes the whole personality of the bike.

Time to get rid of the foamies and see what kind of handlebar options may be fun...

A simple flop might be nice, but it really will work better once converted to a nice long flat stem by way of a threadless stem adapter like the one I used on Ye Olde GT Talera.

Decided to get wild and see what would happen if we gave the orig bars the bullhorn treatment. I dunno, it may be a little much. Again, I think that this may be a bit different with a long flat stem and maybe sawing the bars off a bit.

Hey let's throw some riser bars on there and see what happens. Yeah man this look was pretty nice and we are getting into klunker territory here. We tried a few variations like putting way angled out front and completely upside down also, but in the end the regular position looked best.

Niece Kaiyah approves heavily!

Now that all the nuts and bolts have been cracked and I've been able to visualize a few things I am more excited than ever about this built. Obvs I've already named him Monty short for Monterey. Once challenge that I will have is that this bike is not set up in any way for handbrakes and if I can't get the coaster running in the orig wheels I am def going to want to use freewheel, but I already have some ideas on how to solve that.
Gonna be fun. Welcome to the family Monty. Low Budget Soul Rider forever.