Grifter and Bomber

[dylan_bhafc]

Well I am fairly new to this retro mullarky, have got my eye out for an Orange P7 or earlyish Kona and I also really want a blue Raleigh Bomber for cruising along the beach. Anyway in the meantime I have been working on my old Bianchi road bike and then bump into a friend of my parents who I always knew was a real spoke head, we get talking about bikes and he happens to mention that he has got a Bomber albeit in black and single speed along with a Grifter XL both in pretty good nick - he wanted rid of them as they were taking up space so asked if I was interested, so here I am thinking he is gonna want a packet but no - £40 the pair!!! Picked them up today here are the pics.....

 

[doctor-bond]

Go Grifter.

Best bike I ever had: no hands all the way home from school; wheelies at will; bike polo monster; anaconda broadies and callused mitts from those bad boy grips. All that, three gears and easy to prop up outside the shops [sherbet fountain, kitkat and a strawberry milkshake please landord].

Champion.

 

[grundig-world-cup-90]

bomber

man

£40 bucks, well a deal! :shock:

sell us the bomber bud! pimp daddy cruiser wheelie master!

 

[JohnH]

Yeah, 40 quid's a bargain price. I always remember the Grifter as a really heavy bike -- although to be fair, I was probably about 10 years old the last time I rode one.

And the Raleigh Bomber! Crikey, you must feel like Peter Fonda when you're riding that...

 

[orange71]

yeah those Grifter grips - had forgotten about them :shock:

 

[JohnH]

That saddle, though... I think that Raleigh must have changed that as they updated the Grifter. I seem to remember that the original saddle was a huge chunk of foam.

 

[orange71]

yes that's not the saddle I remember - more like this:

 

[JohnH]

Yeah, that's the one I'm thinking of! Do you remember the twist-grip gear shift with a little window to show you which gear you were in? You'd see either blue, yellow or red through the little opening to tell you which of the 3 gears you were in... (I'm gonna shut up now before I start rambling about those tubes of sherbet with the liquorice in the middle... :roll: )

 

[orange71]

tubes of sherbet with the liquorice in the middle...

which you can still get, albeit recently (only in the last year or so) they changed the wrapping.

The coolest thing for me were the mudguards.

 

[JohnH]

tubes of sherbet with the liquorice in the middle...

which you can still get, albeit recently (only in the last year or so) they changed the wrapping.

What?! They've done away with the yellow paper? Is nothing sacred?

The coolest thing for me were the mudguards.

I agree, those stubby little mudguards were pretty cool. And I like the tyres shown on the Grifter in the opening post -- they almost have a square cross-section, like a skinny version of a car tyre.

Wasn't there a 'junior' version of the Grifter... was it called the Raleigh Boxer?