Outrunm

Probably a Widowmaker. Either that or buy my Cyclecraft cruiser back and change it up a little.

Wow that's an incredible find!

I'll try to keep a long story short. My daughter (6 years old at the time) tried racing about 3 years ago. She rocked her SE Mini Bronco for about a month before I bought a mini and threw a few bucks at it. She never made it one moto after that. She ended up crashing in practice hard enough to scare her away for good I thought. Fast forward about 3 years, and she tells me she would like to try racing again. I took the kickstand and basket off her street bike, and she tore it up. I pulled the mini out of the rafters that I had already sized down for her little sister, and tried to make it as big as possible, but she still looked like a giant on it. I am lucky enough to be local to J&R, so I was inside checking out Expert frames for the Hell of it. I told my kid that I wasn't plunking down $$$ until I was sure she was going to keep racing for a while. Bill overheard me and offered up this Cyclecraft to use as long as she wants. I am in the process of transferring parts from the mini to this frameset. A guy on the Museum is hooking me up with a V-brake plate, and I am tracking down a 1" threaded headset. She should be rocking her new (to her) bike by the end of the week. The only thing better than hitting the track is watching your kid do it. Here she is on the street bike complete with Skyways I won at the Florida Spring Fling raffle: Here is a better pic of the bike: This is her new race bike in progress: Edit: Found a headset. Now just waiting on the brake mount to arrive. This will work fine for a little while. If she rides for a few months, especially after she crashes, I'll get her whatever she wants for a race bike. Thanks again Bill. Your generosity is greatly appreciated.

I dig those studd stems. Here this a preproduction Studd frame with Studd chainring. The forks were bent in a crash BITD, and I stuck a set of MCS forks on it. At one point it had a proto Studd stem as well, but it was sadly lost over the years. Also on this bike is an early Crit number plate with stainless bolts and a Crit padset.

That's an incredible pickup. I would love to see how this one ends up.

Sounds like that JMC is fucked. You better send it this way so I can recycle it properly. In all seriousness glad to know you came out relatively unscathed.

How the hell did I just now see this? Great interview.

What a rad looking bike. That's what I picture when I think BMX of my era.

It's a shame about the contest. There have been some great builds.

Studd came from the brain of Bill Green. He was the owner of The Place for Wheels bike shop in Miami and TM of Flying Wheels,which was the NBL #1 bike shop team 3 or 4 times in the 80's. Bill ran this quick change sprocket on his personal bike then started the marketing process. The Flying Wheels team was basically converted to Studd after the 84 nats. Bill had a good sense of talent and got ahold of some good riders as well. Unfortunately, BMX died right about the time Studd was ramping up. I am convinced that he could have made a mint if he had brought the product to market 3 years earlier.

Yes. That was the Studd. Here is another shot and a drawing.

The track pedigree makes it even better

Someone at the museum let me in on some cool jumps not far from my house. The area is under a canopy of trees so it is hidden away and pretty comfortable even in the summer heat. Past the boat manufacturer Around the pond.. It rained on my way out on this day, and this dried up pond was completely full the next day. My 3 year old calls this the tunnel to the forest.. :-) It opens up to a rather large area

I raced tonight for the first time in a while. While hanging my bike back up in the garage, I got a good look at my old race bike from BITD. It is a Studd expert frame. It's a pretty good sized expert with a 18.5" top tube. The pro frames were way long for their time. Ray McNally was on the team, and he was a big dude. The story behind this is that 2 protos were made at the time; one for myself and one for Frank Amado. Mine is slightly different due to the milled headtube. I honestly don't know if any expert frames other than these two were produced. These were made by Cyclecraft. I got this one raw and raced it a couple of times before sending it off for paint. When I got the F&f back, we put it together in Bill Green's shop and headed off to the track. It fell off the rack on the way to the track and the forks got tweaked, so we replaced them with MCS forks off my old race bike. They were sprayed and splattered to match about a season later. Over the years some parts have been lost and replaced with whatever was laying around. The Studd adjustable stem was an unstamped prototype as well, but sadly, is long gone and replaced with a DK. One of these days, I will give this some attention.