Schwinn Sprint and One Week Stingray

[Daddyar]

My wife's grandfather passed away before Christmas, and her grandmother doesn't want to live in the house anymore. The Sprint belonged to my father in law, and the Stingray was his younger brother's. Believe it or not, but these have been in a garage for about 30 years. My father in law gave me both bikes. According to him, the Sprint had drop bars, but when his lil bro outgrew the 20", he took over the Sprint and installed the buckhorns. It's a 74 or 75 from what I've read, because it has the curved seat tube. Unfortunatley, lil bro (who's about 50) asked for the Stingray back,says he wants to restore it. So I will have had it only for a week. I was asked if I would restore it, and decided not to. I told him restoring was a subjective term. What do you mean by restore? If you want it to look like new, all Schwinn parts, stripped, painted and new decals, expect to spend about a grand on a bike that I don't think is worth it. I told him it's worth about $40-50 as is. To make it a decent rider would still be at least $200 for parts (wheels, tires, bars, banana seat, sissy bar, chain guard), and that's new aftermarket stuff. I'm still gonna cross my fingers I'll get it back some day.

 

[ratina]

Cool finds, those sprints are rare and desirable because of the curved seat tube. Too bad you couldn't hang onto the stingray

 

[Gold Street Customs]

I dont think I have ever seen one of those sprints...pretty cool !

 

[CCR]

nice looking sprint ! i always liked the bent seat tube looks, planning on putting drop bars back on ?

hope the grips clean up on the stingray, coppertone chubbies are $$! to replace, $200 sounds about right for aftermarket/used stuff. i spent $150 a while back just on a seat and tires and some little stuff for my deluxe :shock:

 

[Larry]

Interesting. I've never seen a sprint with an ashtabula/varsity fork.

 

[CCR]

http://www.geocities.com/sldbconsumer2/ ... cpg15b.jpg

does look like a varsity fork swap

 

[Daddyar]

I had never seen the curved down tube before I saw this bike. I actually asked my father in law if that's how it was, and he said yes. It's possible the forks were changed. As far as he remembers, just the bars were changed. I think the seat may not be original, but it has the Schwinn Approved tag on the back. The grips are Schwinn too.

As for the drop bars, I'm not a big fan of them, I kinda like the way it looks now. It's definitely in better shape than the Stingray. I'm gonna clean up the Sprint, put new tires and tubes, and see how it rides. I'm planing on gumwalls and possibly looking for some skinny chrome fenders to give it a townie look. I've also heard that the short wheelbase makes them wheelie machines, so I may have to try that with a set of small apes.

 

[Schwinnspastic]

kinda like the Sprint as I have the same bike but yours seems to have a bunch of incorrect parts, they are fairly rare and a 2 year only frame
74/75 Schwinn discontinued the frame design due to slumping sales and the added cost to build them ...they are short wheel base and
handle with a little more responce than the average frame, these bikes were built to race but they are a little heavy so they really didn't do
to well going up against the lighter European bikes of the day but they are a sollid good riding bike.