My wife and I own a bike shop and are both bike mechanics.  I've never had trouble with them.  A good quality bent uses standard bike parts. And a lot of these guys are using CAD to model and build their bikes now.   I'd be curious to know what brand you are talking about because most of the stuff I see coming through my shop are pretty nice pieces of human powered transportation.    You may have been working on some homemade stuff.   I think the industry has improved quite a bit in the last few years (I'm also a manufacturer) and it also has to be pointed out that prices are high because many of these bikes are made here in the US not stamped out in Taiwan by the thousands.  Some of the issues i see are that bike stands are not really friendly to holding recumbents but with the right workstand, they are just as easy to work on as conventional bikes.  The former president of Giant is a recumbent enthusiast and noted in a convention speech last month that if you are a bike shop not selling recumbents in ten years you may find yourself out of business. With growth in the demographic for that market and the incredible growth rate in sales in the last five years, people need to get on board.

Are you calling me fat?  'cause that is the only way that could happen

Pikers......

Get back to me when you find one that folds in half and has a yoke on the back for a SMLE #4.

 

 YES!!!!!

 I saved up paper route and horse stall mucking for an entire year to get a white one.( I didn't know until a decade later that the only reason they were painted was because of subpar chrome!)


 My older bro traded it for a sack of weed.


Parental response?


"Shouldn't have spent that much on a bike".





 Coolest on grounds of being designed and built by my neighbor:





 I'd love to have an OG Trickstar - especially in white or pink - Haro Master or General Fred Blood  to relive that part of my mis-spent youth. The General would kick serious ass in yellow if it still had the wheel covers.Hell yeah.

Yes, i am fatass.
I don't remember them being out like that. Or square stays either.
I need to catch up i guess.

I had an Orange Crate - the only bike possibly cooler than the Apple Crate!!   Not very practical, and not cool in the sense most here will insist on (high performance, off road, whatever).  Just cool for a kid in the late `60's.  Very cool!

My brother had one of those cool shwinn stingrays, complete with the ball buster stick shift on the top tube.  Mom always did like him better.

I like the way you think.....

Nice avatar

Posting old gt's needs more aggressor

Not mine.

Raped by redline it looks like.

I like my black tupperware bicycles.  Save steel for my sidearms

Yamaha Moto-bike

Well Shit!   Still needs a front wheel and a gun rack.

In reference to drivetrain components, wheels and brakes you are correct. Everything else is a different story. I have seen excessive problems with stem clamp systems, excessive chain/cassette,chainring wear due to angle and chain length, shifting problems due to front derailuer angles and un-necessary cable/housing wear due to poor engineering.

Bachetta and Sun, plus a number of cutom one-offs, are the models I have primarily worked on. Bachetta where actually the worst.


Anyone can get on wiki and argue advantages/disadavntages, the question I have for you is this:
UCI has banned them since 1934. Do you really think that anything banned by UCI will be the next big thing considering how image oriented and "clicky" the cycling world is?

Don't get me wrong. I worked on a number of them, and hand trikes, for handicapped customers and I think it is great to get mobility challenged people outdoors, but the things have serious engineering issues BECAUSE they use primarily upright bicycle designed drivetrain components. Bents will not be the huge "next" thing until these challenges are overcome and price, weight and bulk come down. They are very hard to transport with anything aside from a pick-up or a very pricey rack attachment.

Better show the Polaroid or BS


 

I had a Schwinn Grey Ghost 5 speed(One year only model) IIRC it sold new for $89.95 in either '68 or '69.
My mother sold @ a garage sale in '75 for $20.
I think mint examples sell for $3000-3500.

That reminds me of my old Huffy Pro-Thunder

My buddy restores old bikes, he has a whole garage full of partially done bikes,  parts, complete bikes, etc..


http://coasterbrakecustoms.com/2011/02/1968-schwinn-apple-krate-semi-resto/

I begged and pleaded with my parents to get me one of those, they got me the lemon peel instead.

I can certainly acknowledge there was poor engineering in the past.  Many of the guys that started in the recumbent industry were bike frame builders or welders, not engineers.  But that has changed.  A lot of the current companies have engineers at the helm.  I don't have to get on Wiki to argue my points. I'm the guy that bought Burley's recumbent division and a frame designer and engineer so I speak from inside the industry.  The challenges you talk about are being or have been overcome. The fact is roadbike sales from the demographic of Lance wannabes are dropping as recumbent sales pick up faster than the drop in conventional roadbike sales.  I'm talking numbers here.  I just pointed out that recumbent trike sales are doubling year after year over the last 5 years.  Did you catch that?  That means that for every 100 trikes sold 5 years ago, there are 1600 that sold last year.  The demographic is moving away from DFs to recumbents.  The prices are competitive with roadbikes in some classes. The weights on the CF recumbent bikes are dropping and Hi-racers (biggest segment of  two wheel bents) fit on a regular bike rack.  You are about 3 years behind the times on this.  
As to the UCI, the reason they ban them is because of the unfair advantages that bents have in races. That is why in open class racing the bents win.  We typically get our own class because otherwise it would make all the other bikes look so sad.  The bike teams coming in first in the RAAM are guys 50 on up and they ride in on recumbents HOURS before the youngsters ride in on conventional bikes, yet the actual winners don't get the overall trophy because they have to be relegated to the  'recumbent' class.  Tim Brummer showed up that national time trials on a bent years ago and destroyed the field. The reaction was to ban the recumbents from open competition.  

I see your points but still feel that you are ignoring the facts on where the industry is headed.  Sales numbers tell the story.  All that said, I'm glad that there are bike shop guys like you because it means I have less competition for my recumbent specific shop.

BTW, Sun and homemade recumbents are really not representative of the industry now.

Sorry, I wasn't clear on the wiki point. I wasn't saying you needed it to argue, I was saying that the pro's and con's are lsited quite clearly and we don't need to rehash this.

As I recall, UCI did it more for safety than anything else. Maneuverability being the prime concern.

I stand by my major point though:

The Lance wannabees, people willing to spend more than 3 grand on a bike, will never get on bents based on the clicky nature of cycling. It's wose than the women shooters section of arfcom.

I'm 2 years out of the bike business so I will take your word on the mechanical puzzles being overcome. Still pretty hard to solve the chain length issue though.

1988.5 Haro Master in Black on Black. Team version.

That was my first bike, except it was red.  Single speed, coaster brake, banana seat and long, curved handle bars.  Man, I rode it into the ground!

Just me and my Bullit, by Santa Cruz.
Yes, spelling is correct. Named that way after the Steve McQueen movie/car.

I've got a '99 F3000. It's awesome even compared to some of today's hardtails...

I had a rather weird bike back in the day.  It was a stingray design, but you could pull a pin and the front end would swivel at a point under the seat and you could do really weird tricks with it.

Like crashing and dying.

I think I tired of the novelty fast and just left it pinned

Elgin Twin 60.
Go to Nostalgic.net. to see bikes you never knew were made!
( 1933-1942)

I wish the Spandex Cowboys would quit trying to hijack this thread with skinny tire bikes. 70's or 80's bikes were the heat. If I were to drop 5-7k on something with two wheels again it would be another CRF 450 to make a supermoto.

These look more like what we had for the babnana seat stingray. We would take parts from other bikes to make our own bikes. You know the old saying, necessity is the mother of invention!

We had to make do with what we had. Those are the bikes of bikes. People that were not around in our time, just can not appreciate these classic wonders.

this is a bike i just built for myself.

f/f stem are from Johnny at True Torch.

wheels i built myself from old schwinn king sting hubs and rims.

really sweet ride.