Stingray's New Lease on Life

[Lil' rat rod]

Hello all, this will be my first build thread. Last night I was driving around and spotted a bike in someones garbage so I stopped and it was a newer mongoose bmx bike. It is nothing fancy but I discovered that the only thing wrong with it was a broken chain, so I brought it home and went to bed. After brainstorming all night I thought it might be cool to transfer everything that will fit to an old rat rod of mine.

Mongoose:

Stingray:

I Bought this Stingray from a bike show about 5 years ago and have been messing with it ever since a couple of years ago when it just lost its fun. Since then it has been sitting like this in the attic, so i figured its time to do something with it.

 

[Markm]

Sounds cool!! 8)

 

[Lil' rat rod]

The past couple of days I have gotten both bikes mostly disassembled. I will let the pictures do the talkin.

Stingray almost all apart, I am having trouble getting the crank off but it will happen one way or another. Also got rear wheel mocked up:

'

So thats where all of the flathead screwdrivers went:

The parts off of the mongoose:

Mongoose as of right now, Next is figure out how to get that fancy fork and headset off:

Thanks for looking,
Jon

 

[NLCTVWguy]

Yeah that's a cool little Stingray. It's a Junior or Bantam frame. I see it's got a Bantam chainguard but it's hard to say what it was originally.

Generally you can break loose Schwinn crank nuts by opening the kickstand and turning the crank backwards against it. I'm sure you'll get it off.

The bearings from either bike will probably work for the crank. You may find you'll need a spacer behind the sprocket side bearing cone to keep the sprocket from scraping the frame. Not a problem for larger Stingray frames made to take a 46t or 52t (mag) sprocket, but probably a tight fit on a Junior with its 36t sprocket (Lucky-7).

If you need a spacer, a bike shop probably has one, or you might get lucky and swap in a different bearing cone from another 1-piece crank, or you can visit the hardware store and find a flat washer for a 7/8" bolt. A metric M20 washer would probably fit in there well too. You want one that's not too thick.

If you find you need one, note that the right side (sprocket side) bearing cone is a little larger than the left side, and it's right-hand (normal) thread instead of the left-hand thread used on the left side. They're also usually stuck pretty bad. Expect a fight.

Another thing you'll have to figure out on that frame is how you're going to mount brakes. The front fork will give you a brake mount, but the rear fender arch on a coaster Schwinn is just about useless for anything else. Might have to get creative here. I don't have any good suggestions here that don't involve welding, but I've seen some pretty good clamped-together brackets that seem to get the job done.

That seat strut (sissy bar) is a Krate part... not sure how it wound up on that bike but it's a good thing and you should sell it to me.

The long seat post is another piece that didn't come with a Bantam but will simplify your project. You'll see that Schwinn used very small seat posts on all their bikes- 13/16" post with a 5/8" top section. Much smaller than most seats these days.

Alright, have fun with it! Looking forward to how it comes out.

--Rob

 

[Lil' rat rod]

The bike is a Junior frame. When I got it I only paid $10, it was just the frame as you see it with the original forks, the same lucky seven sprocket, the original Junior bars and miss matched wheels and tires. The Bantam chaingaurd I got at another swap meet for cheap.

I will probably just use the lucky 7 with the other crank.

The rear brakes are still a mystery to me also, I am trying to think of ways to mount them.

The Krate sissy bar i got really cheap at a swap meet because it was and is in really bad shape but, it still works just fine! I also added the longer seat post because at 6' 4" the original one would not cut it!

This ain't my first rodeo but thanks for your comments!

Jon