Before there were Mountain Bikes

Before mountain bikes were mass produced there were individuals around the country tinkering to make the traditional bicycle more functional in different environments.  For me it was riding in the snow, for others it was riding in the dirt.

We all know what happened of course and the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame has the story.  We know a lot about the originators of the mountain bike, and little about those tinkerers like myself who never got famous.

 These pages are for them.  I start with my own and a few other stories here and am looking for more.  

Got a Mountain Bike Story?

Were you or someone you know a bicycle tinkerer back in the day? Would you like to share your story?  Please contact me and let me put your story on this website.

Me and my 1974 Tankagnolo mountain bike.

I arrived in Spokane, Washington in the winter of 1972, an early escapee from the cost of living in California.  I was an avid cyclist that made the move with no regard for such inconveniences as snow and ice.   I cycled anyway.

My bicycle at the time was  a Campy'ed out Motobecane with sewn-up tires.  Needless to say I fell down a lot.  I realized if I wanted to stay upright I needed to make some changes.

My first change was to try a different bike; I purchased a second hand, big tire, one speed bike with kick-back brakes and fenders.  While this addressed the falling,  going uphill was pretty tough.  I was frustrated!

My next change started with the idea of fitting the one speed with a ten speed cluster to allow for better climbing.  Sounded good, but then there were the brakes to consider. As far as I knew  no wide caliper brakes existed .

Then one day I noticed JC Penney Department Store sold a bike with a Shimano disc brake that I thought might work with my 10 speed fat tire bike .  I ordered it up and got to work.

 I built a rear wheel with the 2.25" rim with a ten speed cluster and disc brake.  Tankagnolo mountain bike was born.  I was now free to do ride my bike in the snow, on the hills and of course dirt roads.

My only problem, the frame was too small.  No to be deterred I put my high school metal shop skills to use on adapting a properly size Schwinn Varsity 10-speed to fit the big wheels.  With some heating, bending, and brazing in new stay supports, "Tankagnolo II" was born.

In 1976  a final stripped down version for back roads was completed.

Specifications for Tankagnolo

For Tankagnolo I, II and III 

Frame: Tankagnolo I: From one speed cruiser, name unknown.

Frame: Tankagnolo II and III: Schwinn Varsity - 25 inch, mild steel.

Fork: Modified BMX for 26 inch fat tire wheel.

Wheels: 2.25 inch, steel, chromed, rims from one speed cruiser.

Tires: 2.25 inch balloon tires, wire bead.

Front Hub: From one speed cruiser.

Rear Hub: Shimano hub with threads for brake disk.

Quick Release: None, bolt on wheels, steel axles.

Pedals:  Steel, no clips, no cages.

Cranks: Schwinn one piece steel crank.

Chain Rings: 52T large, 39T small, steel.

Freewheel: Five speed, 34T large, 14T small, steel.

Gear range: "Alpine", 29.82 to 96.57 gear inches.

Rear Derailleur: Crane by Shimano, steel.

Front Derailleur: Unknown, steel.

Shift Levers: Stem mounted, friction.

Front Brake: None.

Rear Brake: Shimano disk brake, steel and aluminum construction, 7 inch steel disk, 1 1/4 inch replaceable brake pads. (brake was a stock item on 1974 J.C. Penney's ten speeds).

Seat: Generic vinyl ten speed style.

Seat Post: Schwinn, steel, 13/16 inch diameter.

Handlebars: Standard ten speed drop bars, aluminum.

Stem: Alloy, 21.1 mm diameter, 0 degree rise.

Fenders (Tanko I and II): From one speed cruiser, steel.

Weight: 45 lbs (65 lb weight mentioned in 1978 story was with the rear carrier and box.)

Tankagnolo in 1976

I left the snow to move to Portland in 1980, and soon after traded Tankagnolo III for a nice commuter bike and thought little of it until the mountain bike boom began.  As I could see the possibility for historical interest, I wished more and more that I had the bike.  I ran an ad in the local club paper asking if anyone had seen it, hoping to find it and buy it back.  It was much like Peewee Herman’s dilemma with his stolen bike in “His Great Adventure”.  No answers.

My wife and I were shopping in a Salvation Army Store in the St. Johns neighborhood of Portland.  I saw a beater JC Pennies bicycle in the corner.   Then I saw the disc brake, the one part that would be hard to find.   The brake was in good shape, so I dropped the $5.50 without thought and walked the bike home.  I now had the part to build a copy of Tankagnolo. 

IThe biggest hurdle completed, I built a rear wheel with the disc on one side and the five-speed freewheel on the other.  I then set out to find the next two important components, a Shwinn Varsity bike and an “old school” fat tire fork that would fit the Shwinn frame.

After some looking and wondering if they had grown scarce, I found a complete Shwinn Varsity with a 23 inch frame at Community Cycling Center here in Portland.  A young man named Jeff, referred too as “the Shwinn guy”, set me up with the bike, including all the components in great shape.  It was funny that over the next week I saw five Shwinn Varsities at garage sales, though none as clean as the one Jeff sold me.  I guess they are not that rare yet. 

I collected more parts from local shops and polished them up and put them in a cardboard box.  Still the completion seemed far off.  There was the need for welding equipment.

I explained the need for an oxy/acetylene torch to heat and bend the frame to fit a fat tire wheel to the guys at Weir’s Cycle up the street from where I live in North Portland.  I had the discussion at ten in the morning. They let me in their work area and as I nervously set up the welding gear, it came to mind that the last time I welded was in 1975 when I built Tanko III the first time.  Working with the torch on a bike was like riding one.  Seemed I never forgot.  All the bends came out as fanaticized the first try.  My fears of the stays having fancy “S” curves in them from retries were unfounded.  I was done by eleven, took the frame home, sanded it and painted it the same, still available, Rustolium “Royal Blue” I used in 1976.

The Disc Brake from JC Penney's Ten-Speed

I was having little luck finding the fork.  There were plenty in the new mountain bike style, but no old one speed “cruiser” forks that had a long enough steerer tube to fit a 23 inch frame.  At Portland’s City Bikes, they helped me search every storage area for such a fork.  In the process I found other things I needed, but not the fork.  As I was making my purchase at the cash register, Ed said “there’s a cruiser fork in the corner”.  Like a glimmering beacon, it was there, a new “remake” in the old style, chrome even.  I snatched it up and was gone.

That evening about six I decided to start, just do a few things   At one-thirty that night, Tankognolo IIIA was all but finished.  It was cabled up and was short only handlebar tape and adjustments of the shifters and brake.

The next day, after peeking into the garage to make sure I didn’t dream this completion, I made one quick run to the Community Cycling Center in hopes of finding a longer stem, and found a HUGE long one, and finished the bike.  I showed it off to neighbors, rode it, took pictures of it and compared its feel with my 1996 GT LTS.   Times sure have changed !!!!!

Tankagnolo IIIA is now on display at Weir's Cyclery in the St Johns district of North Portland, Portland's oldest bicycle shop, opened in 1924.

 Tankagnolo IIIA at Weir's Cyclery

My thanks go to Steve and the crew at Weir’s Cycle, Jeff and the crew at the Community Cycling Center, and Ed and the crew at City Bikes.  Their familiarity with the “old school” bicycles and their willingness to give time to my project allowed me to complete it much more quickly.  Because of them, the bike is so close to the original, I double take myself when I look at it.  And thanks again to Wheel Sport Cycle in Spokane for starting me off the first time back in 1973

After showing the above bike at bike shows and riding it around the city and trails of Portland, I put the Tankagnolo III (A) on permanent display at Weir’s Cyclery in Portland so many more could see it.  I wished to promote the Northwest as a place where the mountain bike was alive in 1974 and to promote the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame for recognizing that fact.

Soon after the display went up, I began to miss having access to the bike to ride.  It would not be easy to take the bike off of the display, even for the big events like Portland’s “Bridge Pedal”.

A few months later, I received an email regarding a JC Penney’s bike with a disc brake for sale on Craig’s List.  A half hour after I received the email, I was handing over $27 for what was left of the JC Penney bike.   Luckily what was left was a good disc brake.   It was time to build another bike.

Most of the story is a rerun of the above.  The main change that has occurred since 2002 is the higher cost and lower availability of old Schwinn parts.   Portland’s alternative bike cultures include one that loves to build crazy bikes with extended forks, stacked frames, and all sorts of delightful art bikes.  The best frames for amateur welders are good old mild steel Schwinn Varsities.  There is also a growing Schwinn vintage bike culture.   So finding parts and then paying for them was the big challenge.   All said and done, this bike cost well over twice cost of the 2002 version.  The bike took about six weeks to build, so I was soon out on road and trail to play and show it off.  I was even lucky enough to wake up to a good snow fall one day and had the day off to go play on the bike that I originally built for snow travel.

The second bike is not as completely an exact clone of the original, or the first remake.  I included a Brooks saddle, the saddle I would have used in 1976 if I had the money at that time.

Again, my thanks to the folks at the Community Cycling Center, City Bikes, Recycle Cyclery, Weir’s Cyclery, Revolver Cyclery, Frame maker Ira Ryan, Joe at The Missing Link Bicycle Shop, and his buddy, Eric, who sells Schwinn parts and bikes on his own.

Back to the Original Motive

A California transplant to Spokane Washington, looking for a way to ride a ten speed in snow, only later to discover the wonders of dirt.

To make a short story long, all that follows are photos.

For more information about Bob's mountain bike history go to these sites:

• Weir's Cyclery

• Mountain Bike Hall of Fame

  Rodney Rom

The Cinncinati Mountain Bike Connection

The 1966 ChROMer

Being a Midwestern mountain-bike pioneer, I was distanced from the information available during the mountain bike's "mid-to-late 1970s" gestation period concerning the Marin County, California developments and claims.

In mountain biking's infancy, not many Midwestern newsstands carried mountain bike magazines. Since my Ohio creation pre-dated these published developments, I would humbly like to share the story of my 1966 east-of-the-Mississippi pioneering efforts.

On February 26, 1966, I graduated to multi-sprocket bicycles with my purchase of a new 10-speed Schwinn Varsity Tourist from Willy Greb, owner of Montgomery Cyclery, just outside the northeast city limits of Cincinnati.

The $69.95-plus-tax purchase price on the receipt does not reflect the value of the new-but-modified 3-speed, front-suspension Sting Ray I traded in on the Varsity. The Varsity was basically a good highway bike, allowing me to travel greater distances using less time and effort.

Its only two drawbacks for me were the woefully-inadequate-when-wet brakes and the skinny wheels and tires, since not all of its use was pavement mileage.

At the time, I also rode quite a bit in the woods and hills of our eastern-Cincinnati suburbs with two other Varsity-equipped friends, Ron Zibulka (now living in California!) and Steve Lonnemann.

Our main off-road challenge was “Suicide Hill” near Loveland. The tires and wheels were a liability because we could never enjoy the full potential of our many gears as we were always afraid of blowing a tire or bending a rim. The final straw, however, came not on the trails but on a city street one unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon in early April of 1966 about a half block from home.

We had just had a rain shower. I was going down a slight grade and approaching a green traffic light when the light changed. I grabbed both brakes – and rolled right through the red light! Fortunately, there was no cross traffic, so I lived to tell the story. But the next afternoon, I was back at Willy’s cycle shop to see what could be done to improve the Varsity – and my longevity.

• Imported German Union drum brakes, front and rear;
  
• 26x2.125 heavyweight rear tire with S-7 rim;· 26x1.75 middleweight front tire with S-7 rim;
  
• Heavy-duty .105”-diameter spokes, front and rear; and
  
• Rear sprockets #1 & 2 with two and one extra teeth, respectively.

The only item lacking was a suspension system.

I thought about the coil-spring front fork from the old Schwinn “tanks”, but my Varsity was the tall-frame model to accommodate my long inseam, and the fork stem tube was too short to fit through the frame tube.

Since I would have had to do major re-engineering for the suspension – engineering which, at that time was beyond my capabilities or budget. I chose to leave it rigid-framed.

Even though the middleweight front tire had adequate clearance in the stock fork, I did have to cut, widen, and re-weld the rear frame to accept the balloon tire. After widening the frame, the original blue paint needed a refinish in the welded areas.

None of the local body shops could guarantee a spot match and, because of the modification, the Schwinn factory's legal department notified me in a letter that they wouldn’t allow me to ship the frame back to them for a complete re-do, so I stripped the rest of the paint off and had the frame chromed!

It looked great when it was new. In Schwinn's letter of refusal, they dodged the non-stock-frame liability issue and used the excuse of production schedules to let me down gently.

During the construction phase of the project, most folks called me “crazy” for “cutting up” a brand-new, expensive bicycle. The comments were quite different, however, once the bike was completed!

 

The first photo I took of the completed bike shows the bike parked next to my basement workbench. On the back of the original photo is the developing date – “March 1967." I had that roll of film developed while I was home on leave after Navy boot camp. The picture was actually taken the previous fall, prior to my December 6th ship-out

Subsequent adventures with ChROMer (the bike’s nickname, based on my own surname) included an occasional ride in European and South American liberty ports as well as cruising around the Norfolk, Virginia/northern North Carolina home port area.

As Frank Berto states on page 52 of his book, The Birth of Dirt, "...the mountain bike was more than just a downhill racer."  My bike's hill-climbing modifications improved its rideability in all areas of 2-wheeling. 

Aircraft carriers do have some odd-shaped inner-hull storage voids unusable for much else.  I had to sign a release drawn up by the ship's Legal Officer to be allowed to have it on board ship with me. (As a lowly E-3, I had one benefit not even the officers enjoyed! How many other mountain bikes can claim to be approved by the U.S. military?)

Unfortunately, the salt air almost totally ruined the chrome finish and gave the bike a heavy patina of rust – damage I have yet to repair.

Shortly after my son was born in 1978, I was employed as a welder-fabricator at Riehle's Machine Shop in Fairfax, just southeast of Cincinnati. In the shop, I was able to engineer a very effective aluminum-tube swivel-and-lean trailer hitch and tongue for our children’s wagon.

Our "Berlin Flyer" wagon, by the way, was one of the first to have automotive Ackermann-style individually-steered front wheels instead of the typical horizontally-pivoting straight axle. This feature greatly aided stability and safety while towing my young daughter and son.

We used ChROMer on family outings at the Lunken Airport bikepath in the summers. My daughter and son enjoyed every mile (they didn't have to pedal!).

My wife and I bought our first house in 1980, a mere 1-1/4 mile from the machine shop where I worked. From this time on, until we sold the Cincinnati house and moved to Missouri in early 1982, I regularly used ChROMer to commute.

It was great not having to fill the car's gas tank, and it kept me fit, as well!  I even rode it in the snow, ala Bob Crispin's Tankagnolo, just to prove to doubters that the bike was truly a multi-purpose vehicle.

Is ChROMer still around and operational? Yes, it is. I still own it, along with the original Owner’s Manual and all the documentation mentioned above — receipts, correspondence and dated photographs. It is no longer used as a daily driver, being saved instead for special occasions like parade duty.

May 30, 1966, is the date I completed ChROMer’s assembly and took my first ride. After using it that summer, I did have plans to duplicate and market the favorably-commented-on bike (Willy Greb can verify this) but, unfortunately, Ho Chi Minh and Lyndon Johnson had different ideas as to how I should spend my next few years.

Otherwise, the basement of my boyhood home at 5811 Bramble Avenue in the Cincinnati, Ohio neighborhood of Madisonville would be better known as one of the pre-Marin birthplaces of mountain biking.

Marin County's Gary Fisher has been long accepted as "The Father of the Mountain Bike" for his 1973-'76 efforts. If he is, does this make me a Grandfather or a Godfather?

 Grandfather in the Hall of Fame

Recognition of Rodney's efforts can be found on the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.