The chopper - Cool or menace

stigofthedump
stigofthedump Posts: 331
edited August 2010 in The bottom bracket
The chopper has featured on the cake stop cool wall. Then during 'Ride of my life' on BBC4 was said to have put off a generation of cyclists.
I personally witnessed 2 friends have horrendous crashes on hills because of the chopper's small front wheel instability.
Chopper - Cool or menace? Vote now!
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Comments

  • Smokin Joe
    Smokin Joe Posts: 2,706
    A hideous pile of shite which gave a whole generation the impression that cycling was hard work and only for kids.
  • Cleat Eastwood
    Cleat Eastwood Posts: 7,508
    The bike was great.

    Chopper as in Mark "Chopper" Brandon Reid, now he was a hideous piece of shite....but I wouldnt tell him to his face.

    By the way we migrated to the chopper from a Dragster. Remember them?
    The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns
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  • nmcgann
    nmcgann Posts: 1,780
    stigofthedump wrote:
    The chopper has featured on the cake stop cool wall. Then during 'Ride of my life' on BBC4 was said to have put off a generation of cyclists.
    I personally witnessed 2 friends have horrendous crashes on hills because of the chopper's small front wheel instability.
    Chopper - Cool or menace? Vote now!

    That happened to me too a very long time ago. Poxy useless thing :roll:
    --
    "Because the cycling is pain. The cycling is soul crushing pain."
  • Flasheart
    Flasheart Posts: 1,278
    I had a Dragster :oops:

    dragster.jpg
    By flasheart65 at 2009-09-19
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  • daviesee
    daviesee Posts: 6,386
    Overweight badly handling crap.

    End of................
    None of the above should be taken seriously, and certainly not personally.
  • bearfraser
    bearfraser Posts: 435
    Most definatly "COOL"" but ph-ing dangerous , the front wheel on mine would lift at warp speeds and only good luck would save your butt . Some tw@ eventually destroyed mine thru bad use!!!!!! :lol:
  • Bunneh
    Bunneh Posts: 1,329
    Flasheart wrote:
    I had a Dragster :oops:

    dragster.jpg
    By flasheart65 at 2009-09-19

    Not a 'f*gster'? :lol::wink:
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  • northernneil
    northernneil Posts: 1,549
    things that are dangerous and could potentially hurt you are usually always cool - base jumping, fast cars, wrestling alligators ....... the chopper was cool of its time, but in hindsight probably did some damage to cycling, although its timing, when increased car ownership and increasingly busy roads probably didnt help.

    neither did that yellow pages advert about saddles
  • re-cycles
    re-cycles Posts: 107
    The chopper was a great bike... If it was used for its intended purpose. I doubt Raleigh ever expected it to be a long range tourer or stunt bike. It was an urban cruiser, and as such did a fine job.

    Something far more alarming was the Raleigh "Mag Burner" of the '80s. A BMX that came with a warning notice that advised against using for stunts!
  • Bunneh
    Bunneh Posts: 1,329
    I had a Raleigh Burner, man what a awesome bike it was! Mine didn't have the cool wheels though but rather a spoked wheel. It was used for stunts, ramps which we made with a pile of bricks and a plank of thin wood. Skidding was one of the things I was banned from doing as the tyres wore out in no time.

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  • Pross
    Pross Posts: 40,585
    Following on from my filming thread they are using a chopper in the scene outside at the moment - set in the early 80's :D
  • Smokin Joe
    Smokin Joe Posts: 2,706
    northernneil wrote:
    things that are dangerous and could potentially hurt you are usually always cool
    Things that are fast and dangerous are cool...things that are just dangerous because of poxy design definately are not.

    Choppers, like Harley Davidsons, are for posers who don't understand their machines.
  • on the road
    on the road Posts: 5,631
    A chopper was meant for kids anyway, it was not made for racing or stunt riding but for just messing around on.
  • Stewie Griffin
    Stewie Griffin Posts: 4,330
    on the road wrote:
    A chopper was meant for kids anyway, it was not made for racing or stunt riding but for just messing around on.

    A kids bike thats not made for racing or stunts? Jolly glad I got a grifter then, at least it looked the part.

    Did you all swap bikes for the day with your mates as kids? I turned my nose up at choppers, if I was going to crash it was because of my own stupidity and not becuase the bike I was riding was poorly designed :P
  • freehub
    freehub Posts: 4,257
    Menace, how can anyone ride something so slow, if it's got knobbly tyres I'd not touch it with a barge pole unless I was riding off road or I'm 6ft deep in snow.
  • on the road
    on the road Posts: 5,631
    The choppers in my day didn't have knobbly tyres.
  • northernneil
    northernneil Posts: 1,549
    Smokin Joe wrote:
    northernneil wrote:
    things that are dangerous and could potentially hurt you are usually always cool
    Things that are fast and dangerous are cool...things that are just dangerous because of poxy design definitely are not.

    Choppers, like Harley Davidsons, are for posers who don't understand their machines.

    depends how fast you ride :wink:
  • passout
    passout Posts: 4,425
    Both, surely? Cool stuff isn't usually good is it?
    'Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible' Marcel Proust.
  • iplod
    iplod Posts: 83
    cool as a cucumber, when you were a kid back in the 70's.
    SOLITUDE. It's not for everyone.

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  • schweiz
    schweiz Posts: 1,644
    edited July 2010
    freehub wrote:
    Menace, how can anyone ride something so slow, if it's got knobbly tyres I'd not touch it with a barge pole unless I was riding off road or I'm 6ft deep in snow.

    My (Yellow) Chopper (£10 from the free paper) had a knobbly back tyre and a slick front tyre. I had two major crashes. The first was on a Caravan Site somewhere round Cheddar way. There was a big roundabout in the middle with speed humps every 20 m or so. I was going round and round getting faster and faster until I had an almighty crash, smashed my face into the tarmac and had to be taken to Weston-Super-Mare hospital because the local cottage hospital could only bandage me up. Second was on my street. They were extending our estate and the new roads were still muddy from all the heavy plant. It had been raining and I went down the hill, braked, front wheel washed out and down I went. The crack I got off my dad for muddying my new tracksuit hurt more than the crash though!

    Nostalgia's not what it used to be! Choppers were cr@p
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  • giant_man
    giant_man Posts: 6,878
    The Chopper was a brilliant iconic bike. I had a purple Mk 2 when I was about 10 and bloody loved it. Came off it twice, stiches job both times, but I still loved it. Much more class than the Tomahawk or Chipper .....
  • the_hundredth_idiot
    the_hundredth_idiot Posts: 813
    My Chopper was great - no idea what happened to it - it's not in my parents' garage any more but they never throw out anything. No one seems to know what happened to it.

    Probably for the best, though. I suspect my memories of it are perhaps a little generous and might have been ruined if I ever faced the real thing again.

    It was the only bike on which I ever managed to do decent wheelies - I remember one on the road next to my parents' house and the front wheel fell out mid wheelie - that was an interesting few seconds as I worked out if I was going to be able to land that one with no harm done (to me). :lol: Probably says more about a 12 year old's bike maintenance skills than the Chopper, though.

    My mum wouldn't let me have a Grifter as she'd read a story about some boy who'd hurt his chest badly by hitting the padded bar between the two more upright bits of the handlebars. That story didn't make sense to me at the time and I don't see how it does now. I wonder if she'd already bought the Chopper in time for Christmas? If so, top choice - [old man mode] will kids of today have any memories of the BSO their parents picked up at Asda along with the weekly shop?[/old man mode] Bikes today are so bland and samey (and pure shite in many cases).
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  • OffTheBackAdam
    OffTheBackAdam Posts: 1,869
    I wonder how many boys were rendered sterile by having their goolies removed by the gear stick when they crashed?
    Remember that you are an Englishman and thus have won first prize in the lottery of life.
  • dennisn
    dennisn Posts: 10,601
    There is a 3rd. option - kind of a dumb idea.
  • shouldbeinbed
    shouldbeinbed Posts: 2,660
    The Hundredth Idiot wrote:
    My mum wouldn't let me have a Grifter as she'd read a story about some boy who'd hurt his chest badly by hitting the padded bar between the two more upright bits of the handlebars. That story didn't make sense to me at the time and I don't see how it does now.

    I had a a grifter, I suspect the injured child had been beaten up by itinerant builders after some spare scaffolding poles and knowing that the grifter was made out of them.
    I wanted a BMX :evil:

    My mate lived on a hill and had a chopper, getting a backie downhill on that was a cure for constipation and kept the local chemist in profit for a good few years on detol and plasters. scary mahines
  • snailracer
    snailracer Posts: 968
    edited July 2010
    The Chopper's crap handling is not dissimilar to that of modern road bikes: no grip and likely to wheely due to overly-short chain stays.
  • turkeytickler
    turkeytickler Posts: 640
    Mine sent me flying after hitting a lump in the road, I have 3 false front teeth, shards of the original ones still in my upper lip, and scared knuckles on my left hand, to show for my time with a chopper. Which I loved. Cool and a menace :twisted:
  • turkeytickler
    turkeytickler Posts: 640
    Smokin Joe wrote:
    northernneil wrote:
    Choppers, like Harley Davidsons, are for posers who don't understand their machines.

    that's a bit harsh for something that was aimed at 10 year olds isnt it?
  • on the road
    on the road Posts: 5,631
    I was a 7 year old when i got mine.
  • rake
    rake Posts: 3,204
    had a tomahawk but never a chopper. no gears.

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