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So you want a Charlie Cunningham Indian #1
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bushpig
Senior Retro Guru
The fact that people don't get the point about this bike is evidence of its success. When Charlie made his bikes there were radical and he had an amazing amount of pushback from the early pioneers and early pioneering companies. Later he worked with Trek, Cannondale and Specialized, among other in the areas of frame design, materials and component design. His first personal designs were too radical for customers so the early customer bikes were "dumbed-down" until the reputation of the bikes caught on.
His bikes are a lot more like the French constructeur bikes than is typical for other builders. Easy to have nearly every part be a Cunningham design or modification.
And if you have a Cunningham and are not riding it, you are missing out. Some of the best riding bikes out there. Dialed geometry and more subtly, everything is dialed to work well together and you can feel it. Drivetrain on my Cunningham is smoother than on my XTR equipped MootoX.
His bikes are a lot more like the French constructeur bikes than is typical for other builders. Easy to have nearly every part be a Cunningham design or modification.
And if you have a Cunningham and are not riding it, you are missing out. Some of the best riding bikes out there. Dialed geometry and more subtly, everything is dialed to work well together and you can feel it. Drivetrain on my Cunningham is smoother than on my XTR equipped MootoX.
StanleyButterfly
Dirt Disciple
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Sorry mate. So hard to take your diatribe seriously when you can't even spell your own bikes correctly. I had a nice chuckle though. Cheers!
any123":646fwhun said:
There both of you happy now. I still think the bike is plain crap and ugly. But this does not still answer my question as to why this treasure of pleasure and the inspiration to the whole mountain bike world has not been snapped up by some indiana jones collector of inspiration or the national world museum for bicycles has not called the fellow scholars to buy this for there sanctum of cycling history.
Maybe i'm ignorant and misguided, but i still await my answer to my question. Next you will be saying this is the holy grail of christ and you will put a jhad or whatever it is on my head for Blasphemy, and yes i googled Blasphemy just to make sure it was spelt in the way some people wish.
First fat-bike with a derailleur ridden off road:
As far as I know it was Russ Mahon of Cupertino, California (75 miles south of Marin County), who came up with this combination, in 1973. He grafted derailleurs onto a 1930s balloon0 tire bike built by the Cleveland Welding Company. He also put thumbshifters on this bike. Three Cupertino riders including Mahon showed up at a Cyclo-cross race in Marin, December 1974, pollinating Marin with these ideas. They then departed the scene for more than 20 years.
And it had better welding
Going to get pissed andy
Maybe i'm ignorant and misguided, but i still await my answer to my question. Next you will be saying this is the holy grail of christ and you will put a jhad or whatever it is on my head for Blasphemy, and yes i googled Blasphemy just to make sure it was spelt in the way some people wish.
First fat-bike with a derailleur ridden off road:
As far as I know it was Russ Mahon of Cupertino, California (75 miles south of Marin County), who came up with this combination, in 1973. He grafted derailleurs onto a 1930s balloon0 tire bike built by the Cleveland Welding Company. He also put thumbshifters on this bike. Three Cupertino riders including Mahon showed up at a Cyclo-cross race in Marin, December 1974, pollinating Marin with these ideas. They then departed the scene for more than 20 years.
And it had better welding
Going to get pissed andy
yeah its not beutiful but i would defo have it in my collect. it was 5-6 years later that manufacturere stried making mtbs like that.
I have a picture in a book i have "origins of dirt" i think where suntour came to see that bike to get ideas for there group set. grease ports, sealed bb etc. so a historic bike.
yeah the welds are not cutting edge but neither were the welding machines. now days you get super high frequency TIG, digitally controlled with square wave forms and upslope and down slope control etc. Hell I can even weld alloy with them and i am a begineer so...
But bottom line is it a nice to look at as say a breezer mk2. nope. but its an important bike. i would have it and ride it. err but not at that price :¬)
I have a picture in a book i have "origins of dirt" i think where suntour came to see that bike to get ideas for there group set. grease ports, sealed bb etc. so a historic bike.
yeah the welds are not cutting edge but neither were the welding machines. now days you get super high frequency TIG, digitally controlled with square wave forms and upslope and down slope control etc. Hell I can even weld alloy with them and i am a begineer so...
But bottom line is it a nice to look at as say a breezer mk2. nope. but its an important bike. i would have it and ride it. err but not at that price :¬)
halaburt
Retro Guru
If you want to see Cunninghams in museums, there are several out there:
- Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in Crested Butte, Colorado (2 bikes, including Charlie’s earliest personal Aluminum mountain bike)
- MOMBAT Museum in Statesville, North Carolina
- Shimano Museum in Osaka, Japan
Whether valuable, historically-important “things” should be in museums or in private hands has been debated for years. In the art world, I think most agree that you need both strong museums and strong private collectors active in the market for it to be healthy.
For me, while bikes can be “art”, they aren’t like paintings, sculptures or photographs in that they are (also) designed to be USED (i.e., ridden). While it’s great that these museums have some of these important bikes, it’s also sad that they don’t get used. Some are in actually in a pretty poor state of repair and would require work before they could be ridden.
I know that some here don’t like the comparison of bikes to the automotive world, but it’s apt in this case. I love events like the Goodwood Festival of Speed because it attracts truly top end entries from both the private collector and museum world... and they’re getting USED as intended.
I’d prefer to see #1 get properly restored by Charlie and then get ridden by a new, loving owner who shares it with us all in photos, etc.
- Mountain Bike Hall of Fame in Crested Butte, Colorado (2 bikes, including Charlie’s earliest personal Aluminum mountain bike)
- MOMBAT Museum in Statesville, North Carolina
- Shimano Museum in Osaka, Japan
Whether valuable, historically-important “things” should be in museums or in private hands has been debated for years. In the art world, I think most agree that you need both strong museums and strong private collectors active in the market for it to be healthy.
For me, while bikes can be “art”, they aren’t like paintings, sculptures or photographs in that they are (also) designed to be USED (i.e., ridden). While it’s great that these museums have some of these important bikes, it’s also sad that they don’t get used. Some are in actually in a pretty poor state of repair and would require work before they could be ridden.
I know that some here don’t like the comparison of bikes to the automotive world, but it’s apt in this case. I love events like the Goodwood Festival of Speed because it attracts truly top end entries from both the private collector and museum world... and they’re getting USED as intended.
I’d prefer to see #1 get properly restored by Charlie and then get ridden by a new, loving owner who shares it with us all in photos, etc.
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any123":2v8vfaxt said:
The Mountain Bike Hall of Fame already have an early Cunningham and I expect their are others in captivity.
any123":2v8vfaxt said:
This is from the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame:
"Let’s start in 1953. That year, John Finley Scott made the world’s first known mountain bike. It had multiple gears and knobby tires. He called it his “woodsie.”
http://www.mtnbikehalloffame.com/page.cfm?pageid=10034
The "multiple gears" are derailleur though the bike in the photo has the chain tensioner fitted under the bottom bracket.
Does anyone know of an earlier "First fat-bike with a derailleur ridden off road?"
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