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 Alan Bonds Dream Bomber

The Blue Bike

Since this pup rocks so hard I took a few liberties with grips, pedals and tires. Otherwise it's a faithful "dream" bomber. Both Otis Guy and Joe Breeze had prewar bikes with Bendix two speed shifter hubs. Otis ran the antique cantilever setup and Joe ran a Schwinn "Forebrake" front drum brake. Their efforts more closely resembled vintage racers right down to adapting inch pinch chain to the bendix hub. This bike goes the other way. Notice any similarity to the Cook Bros 26" cruiser? This is a great little bike to bomb down to the coffee shop on and it's pretty light.

The front drum is a Union, the crankset Nervar/TA 48t, pedals Suntour XCs and seatpost is 13/16" T6101 alloy bar which is something the Koski Bros introduced to the scene around 1979. The Ukais are from this time as well. The front fork is 16 1/2 inches compared to 15 1/2 inches available from vintage Schwinn and with less trail, which I like. Ready for a shot at the record on Repack!

While we were able to get prewar Schwinn frames on occasion we almost never found any of the prewar Schwinn tubular truss forks in working condition. Often we were forced to put on later model Schwinn forged blade forks or the 26" BMX forks that were around. One of the guys that used the truss forks was Mark Vendetti on his 37/38 Schwinn. If you get a chance to see the Klunkerz movie those are them looking like a pretzel on the bike he's holding above his head after his famous repack crash...so much for vintage...

I'm hoping to get some pics of both Otis' bike and Joe's. They are faithful 'vintage' bikes and have their own cool factor. Look for them soon.

Contact me at: RepackPioneer@AOL.com