downhilllister
Active member
Blood sweat and tears to work for the cash to buy this back in the day. And i cannot remember what happened to the bike when i stopped riding it. Most likely rust in the ground i would say.
My First Bike back in 1970 ish
- Thread starter downhilllister
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Three gears. Internal inside the hub.
downhilllister
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- #6
That's the gear shifter mate.3 Speed.
downhilllister
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- #7
Got to be a nerd to have a chopper mate.
downhilllister
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- #8
Not my actual bike, but the same.
GrandPaBrogan
⚡ eGeezer ⚡
A very good mate of mine restores those Chopper bikes... they're worth a lot of money if restored correctly according to collectors. Below is a pic he sent me of his one - he orders 'new old original' parts from the UK specialist clubs and auction places. I believe he's working on a second one... authentic parts are getting harder to get.
Him and his son are both respectable DH racers... so I wouldn't exactly call him a 'nerd.'
GrandPaBrogan
⚡ eGeezer ⚡
Just looking at it - yeah, poorly designed mechanically and so they broke easily. Handling was pretty bad too. Apparently they were banned at some point because they posed a serious hazard... not to mention that central T-shifter being a widow-maker! ?
I would like a few of them in my garage.......to sell. 
KeithR
Well-known member
See the dog-leg bend in the rear stay?
That was added to later models to push the rear wheel further out as a safety feature, because the originals had straight rear stays, and hospitals in the UK were full of kids who'd smacked the back of their heads after their Chopper had flipped out from under them..!
We still used to jump them, though: my record was clearing five of my mates who were lying on the ground just past the rickety timber ramp we'd built...
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GrandPaBrogan
⚡ eGeezer ⚡
The seat stay and the chain stay isn't triangulated... instead they form a trapezoid. So a heavy enough load pushing up against the rear axle just eventually folded the rear end.
All this is making me reminisce...
I think the Chopper bike got banned roughly at the same time they banned those large half-kilo "Lawn Darts" that can impale un-co children... by splitting their own heads if they missed their designated ground target. The bike was designed during an era when you could also buy woodwork etching hot-irons with cost-saving foot-long short power leads, so when plugged at the wall socket - it would sit and glow red-hot directly under flammable thin fabric window drapes. Power outlets were always nearby windows in those days. I don't recall my first ever bike to have brakes that actually worked... I just slowed down best I could and headed towards a wall if I really wanted to stop.
I think the designers and engineers at the time were instructed by the government to 'cull the herd' by getting rid of undesirable DNA... I'm happy to have survived... but only just!
KeithR
Well-known member
Was it banned in NZ? Wasn't banned in the UK - in fact Raleigh was putting Limited Edition runs out as recently as 2017.
downhilllister
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- #16
lol. Nerd is a term of endearment for those of us who are social artistic. and being attracted to not the norm things. our talents lie in other places. We are not seen by the main stream. check out this book case, Has an end of life built in.lol
downhilllister
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- #17
Think from memory that t shifter tried to make me sterile more than one time. and im shore the front wheel would turn under if to much turning was involved.still cannot remember what i did with that bike when moving on to a bigger one.
downhilllister
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- #18
Not sure at all. must do some research on that
downhilllister
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- #19
Back in those days i was glazy eyed with the look and never gave the practical any thought. It must have damaged me in some way.as i cannot remember what i did with the bike. Dam age has an effect on the memory, Have fun when young, for as long as you can. Couse some day someone will be changing our adult dippers, lol
downhilllister
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- #20
Yeh, would like all my old bikes/cars. M/bikes in a garage. Could visit them and snort the nostalgia.I would like a few of them in my garage.......to sell.
GrandPaBrogan
⚡ eGeezer ⚡
My friend (who collects them) told me it was banned... but apparently not from what I can gather from a quick internet search. Tall sissy bars were banned in the USA in 1971 so the Chopper Bike only got sold with a low back rest over there. I found an archive BBC TV footage from Dunedin, NZ where it was deemed as a 'dangerous toy' back in 1974 but saw no other reference that it was banned - but this may have been the source why people believed it was. They may have just been pulled out from stores to avoid disputes but then the fad faded when overtaken by the latest BMX craze.
Monkey Dog
Active member
I have some photos of the one I had in the late seventies. It was a kind of purple colour.
Very unstable at high speed & don't run over coke cans, as they wrap around your front tyre & bring you to sudden stop with the rear wheel in the air. Only did it the once and about crapped myself
Very unstable at high speed & don't run over coke cans, as they wrap around your front tyre & bring you to sudden stop with the rear wheel in the air. Only did it the once and about crapped myself
downhilllister
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- #23
My brother had a dragster at the same time .Looked like a bigger version of the chopper, but cannot remember if it handled similar,
Mine was a chipper
The Choper's wee brother.
mine was red like this one.
had it from about 1974 - 76... and when I finally grew out of it and got a new bike my mum donated it to our local funfair and they bolted it onto a kids merrygoround where it stayed in use until the fair was demolished in the late 90s.
I learned to jump on rickety homemade ramps made from bricks and planks of wood on that bike.
Jumpers for goalposts wasn' it?
Supratad
Well-known member
I can’t believe no one has mentioned the high speed wobble yet.
Once up to a speed only achievable on steep hills, the front wheel would start to oscillate. It was non recoverable.
My mother has a school photo of my blotchy face where the scabs had finally come off.
Once up to a speed only achievable on steep hills, the front wheel would start to oscillate. It was non recoverable.
My mother has a school photo of my blotchy face where the scabs had finally come off.
GrandPaBrogan
⚡ eGeezer ⚡
I was actually typing about it when your post went in!
Besides the castrating effect of the T-bar shifter... the most common characteristic reported about it was speed wobble compounded by the fact that the small front wheel would trip-up the bike when going over pot holes.
I did a quick (ball park) evaluation below of the front end (head angle, fork off-set, in relation to the small wheel diameter) and as you can see - it has hardly any caster (sometimes called trail). The more the caster amount, the more stable a bike is at high speeds. There's hardly any caster on that bike which is why beside speed wobbles, it would also 'turn-in on you' if you did a no-hander, or if you hit a pot hole, or when @Monkey Dog ran over coke cans!
This is a common trait when bikes have really small wheels up front. Which is the reason why if you look closely at motor-scooters, the front forks often have a zero or even a reverse rake offset - which is the only way you can introduce a decent amount of caster (or trail) when small wheels are used.
The forward rake offset on the Chopper fork design actually created the caster instability problem. It would've been much better off (and safer) if the fork had no offset whatsoever as this would increase the caster. But hey, don't let good handling get in the way of cool styling! ?
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maynard
E*POWAH Elite World Champion
Ummm aren't all bike people nerds. They need bikes to get away from the football players .
Its' speed wobble totally was recoverable.
The main reason most riders who got spat on their faces when it happened was that they were sat down with all their weight rearwards on that big long seat rather than weighting the centre of the bike through the crannks and the front wheel through the bars.
The main reason most riders who got spat on their faces when it happened was that they were sat down with all their weight rearwards on that big long seat rather than weighting the centre of the bike through the crannks and the front wheel through the bars.
GrandPaBrogan
⚡ eGeezer ⚡
An "mint" original Raleigh Chopper just went for £1,250 at an auction recently. Not bad for a bike that cost £32 back in the 70s (roughly equivalent to £350 today).
Bids flood in for ‘unridden’ 1970s Raleigh Chopper
Bids flood in for ‘unridden’ 1970s Raleigh Chopper
Monkey Dog
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