So you want a Charlie Cunningham Indian #1

1957VintageBiker":xcbe357j said:

This thing has NO VALUE if you just want to ride a bike. It's only value is as a prototype or museum piece or whatever. I never ride mine anymore. It hangs from the ceiling as a memento from the good old days. My ancient body prefers my full-suspension bike.

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I think it still has value as a bike to be ridden. Call it a rolling museum piece I guess. Charlie made these bikes to be used and they've stood the test of time. I understand that yours might not be comfortable for you to ride anymore, and thats ok. But to say it has NO VALUE as a bike to ride is inaccurate. Send me yours and I'll see that it gets used properly.

i must say i am surprised by some of the views on here.....i would have thought on a site celebrating old bikes this would be met with positivity!....it probably isnt that pretty, but look at what it represents the start of.....i wouldnt chose to get to london pulled by stevensons rocket, as opposed to a modern alternative, but it does have representative value i feel......

I have to put my 2 pence worth into this topic after reading 7 pages. Everyone says that the 3 went down a mountain and that kicked it all off, well in my opinion it was not. Back in the fiftys guy's were wondering around on fat tire machines we all now know and love as news boys or clunkers what kids did there paper rounds on. The only reason the famous 3 so to speak got on the chart was that they started racing them and then people took notice.

Welders have been around forever and believe me when i say that the clunkers made in america in the fiftys have some of the finest welds well better than the ones I'm seeing on this bike. I'm sorry but i'm not taken with the whole some guy banged a few tubes together in a shed and shoved some componentry on it that he did not make is then classed has a first innovator of fat tyre bikes. Yes there was a famous race and yes it was called the re-pack, but please don't say they were the inspiration and bikes would not be where they are today if they had not been around.

This bike to me is worthless unless it was used in the re-pack race and is the original that came flying down the hill and had to have the brakes repacked. As someone pointed out it is just a piece of pipework from the usa and this is what will sell it. The new incarnation i saw in the picture somewhere in this topic was just as bad, where a man in a shed shoved some pipes together.

I await to be corrected on what i have wrote and will not apologise for being the sane person speaking my opinion on this matter. Now where is my 1950's newsboy and my welding kit

thanks andy

The point> .




































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Congratulations Any123. Seven pages in and you have managed to make the most misguided and ignorant post yet. Wrong on so many levels.

Going off for a nice calming walk now.

(shakes head)

si

Any123 said that CC didn't make any components on his bikes-Wrong! Look closely and you can see the RollerCam brakes he invented and built fitted to his bikes, as well as the seat post, the extra wide BB, the 135mm rear hub he custom fabbed, all along with the first fat tube, thinwall heat treated aluminum frame for MTB's! The welds on the #1 bike aren't pretty, but are still there many years later after much riding without failing, so I guess they must be good ones, if not pretty!

any123":zr3ee5np said:

... but please don't say they were the inspiration and bikes would not be where they are today if they had not been around....

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"History is just one bleedin thing after another"

Our modern technologies are founded on the incremental steps taken by our forbears.

On the other hand I believe that the mountain bike was "an idea waiting to happen," and if Repack pioneers hadn't starting racing off-road somebody else would have. The Cupertino Riders, the French VCCP, Geoff Apps and John Finley Scott etc, could have caught the imagination of the cycling entrepreneurs, but they didn't. But it was only a matter of time before somebody did.

The point is that individual pioneers can profoundly effect the direction that a technology or sport takes and so accelerate progress significantly. It took ages for the mountain bike world to realise that the geometry of the Schwinn Excelsior was not optimal. But Charlie Cunningham was one of the first to reinvent mountain-bike geometry.

I recall that his ideas were extremely influential. And resulted in the creation of an alternative style of sloping top tubed, fat tube, short wheelbase mountain bikes as championed by Cannondale and numerous others. It was this style of fat tubed bike that superseded the Ritchey style bikes worldwide.

You can argue that Cunningham's ideas would have eventually been arrived at independently by others. And that 30 years on this bike has been superseded in many areas. But this is a lightweight and as such will climb faster than many modern machines. The Repackers may have invented downhill but did Charlie make uphill practical?

Dr S":2riqpt98 said:

Congratulations Any123. Seven pages in and you have managed to make the most misguided and ignorant post yet. Wrong on so many levels.

Going off for a nice calming walk now.

(shakes head)

si

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Quite.

Although I am amused by the fact that a guy who owns six Kleins, can fail to see the importance of Cunninghams work.

But have you SEEN the Di2 stuff he does. He's wrong , for sure, but has earnt the right to disagree.

Its true, the real pioneer is the one who re-appropriated road specific parts and technology to make riding off road lighter and faster...



... but not the guy who spuffed a load of money on the next big thing and hung it off inappropriate bikes.