We Raced The Most Inappropriate Bike At A Hill Climb Event!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- What happens when an ex-junior national hill climb champion races a Raleigh Chopper up one of the steepest climbs in London? That's the question we answer in this video. Joe Baker takes the 18.5 kilo bike up Swains lane in London at the Urban Hill Climb event which is organised by the London Cycling Campaign. The climb is 900 metres long, averages at 8% but is home to a brutal 20% ramp. The Raleigh Chopper was created in 1972 and now has a cult following mainly from fans of E.T., The Goonies, and more recently Stranger Things. So, watch on to find out how this legendary bike fares against this legendary climb.
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As a child of the 70's, the Raleigh Chopper is a bicycling God so I loved this video. Well done. :)
ET, the Goonies and stranger things? You're mixing your bmxs with your choppers fella 😂😂
😂 I was I can't remember seeing a chopper bicycles in those movies
I still got 3 and trying to keep them as good as back in the days
Spent HOURS drooling over these at the Schwinn shop as a kid. Greatest era for bicycles ever!!!
Awesome video guys. When ever I hear Arnold say "get to the chopper" I think of the Raleigh Chopper bike.
Fantastic. Having owned one of these as a young boy in the 1970s you excelled mainly by not sliding painfully onto the selector or breaking the handlebars - these were prone to bending and snapping at the stem. Brought back memories though. Sold mine to get a 5 speed Raleigh Olympus and this is how I first entered racing and time trialing.
The Chopper in the 70s was so coooooool. The only boy who had one in my area was Brendan. Just to sit on it or if he let us, to ride it around the block was the greatest thrill. Most of us were in hybrid/home made used bikes with 3 speed sturmey archer hubs.
I loved this video. I had a purple Sears single speed chopper in the 70’s with a sparkly purple banana seat. This brought back fun memories.
American born in ‘64 - I love a Raleigh Chopper! My dream bike when I was a kid!
The Raleigh chopper wasn't used in ET. They were all BMXs.
... Kuwahara...
I thought they were some sting-rays in the movie also but I can't remember
MY friends older brother won one of those in some magazine comp. We were all very jealous. I still remember it well all these years later, the ET Kuwahara. @@conradmcmahon9323
Saved me the trouble 😂👍🏿
Yes you’re correct
It may not have been the fastest climb of the day, but it was definitely the coolest looking
You definitely don’t know what cool is .
@@W3TFART very true. Thanks for pointing that out for me!
@@MrAsthenia no problem
@@W3TFARTIf you don't think a Raleigh Chopper looks cool, you must need spectacles lol.
@@stevezodiac491 nah you need them
According to Steve Parton, an ex-employees at Raleigh back in the day, it was known as the Raleigh Castrator. I had a Mk 1 myself and managed to retain my plums.
Oh my. Congrats lol
I can remember so many times on my Chopper that it slipped out of 1st gear and caused my plumbs some serious pain 😭😭😱😱
@@brownpartnership11Yep shaking just recollecting those painful memories.
Yep. A friend had a Chopper back in the day. I recall riding it standing on the pedals when the chain snapped. I landed on the gear stick with my gonads. Never rode it ever again.
Joe's a pretty decent presenter, great bike rider as well
Ever the practical woman - my mum sometimes borrowed my chopper back in the day, to ride down to the shops for milk or bread. As kids we were pretty embarrassed but now looking back, what a legendary thing it was to do. I think she also took my sister's bike, complete with basket and streamers. Mine probably had a spokely dokely attached (piece of cardboard on the rear wheel for that coveted and realistic motorbike soundtrack...). Cheers and good work from Aust - Dave
I'm no cyclist, but i was an int'l athlete for over ten years, and i was hurting for you. Great fun and so cool for the crowd and those of us who are old enough to remember when the Chopper was King. Very pleasing video too, in all respects. Rock On!
I’m genuinely surprised/impressed that it made it to the top without exploding
Steel frame
The bike or the rider?
Took me back to 1975 in an instant. Laughed through the whole climb.
I remember doing a wheelie on a Chopper and watching the front wheel escape as the forks sunk into the tarmac and I took a flying lesson 😂
My buddy saw that happen to a kid across the street on a full size bike and smashed his face. And that is why in America, the quick releases became more elaborate and doesn't quite quick release anymore.
My friend did exactly the same thing back in the early 1980's! Green coloured, very cool looking Chopper! As teenage school boys, we did not stop laughing or teasing him for ages.
I'm 59 and what an iconic bike, had one as kids back in the 70s and still have the pleasure of riding one today, but more leisurely along the side of the river Dee on a Sunday morning .. 😊
I haven't spotted you in Aberdeen, so I'm guessing this is the river Dee in Wales?
Now try riding it down the hill. Front wheel speed wobble was awful on Choppers, dangerous even.
I had a chopper back in the 70's and LOVED it.. Brilliant memories. My mate actually had one then with a 5-speed derailleur on 🤔😁
Chopper was my first bike, in the 80's . would never have attempted a hill like that on it, lol. Awesome stuff. Drew.
I had a Chopper at my grandparents in the 1980s. Did many miles on it and loved it. Happy memories.
It was my first bike back in 1975. I was living in Gran Canaria and it was really something special. Nice memories.
That was bloody good, thanks for that. The Chopper cat race has started.
Never had a chopper, went straight on to the Rayleigh Grifter. Another fantastic bike.
Me too. Great bike but I wouldn’t fancy lugging one up this hill. The geometry is probably slightly better but they weigh a ton.
I think the aero skin suit was a nice touch and showed commitment to the cause, but I am sure that he would have done approximately .275 seconds quicker with a proper aero helmet. This video bought a smile to my face - Great work guys.
He should have been wearing massive flares and a tank-top 😅
No, a aero helmet would not have been faster. He was stood up and so the helmet was not in an aerodynamic position, also the air speed climbing a hill is very low.
Would have looked cool though lol.
Mine was metallic purple and had a taller sissy-bar. The front and back wheels were the same size (20").
I got mine for my 9th birthday in 1974 and immediately took off the mudguards and the chain guard.
The COOLEST after-market add-ons:
(1) handlebars that didn't 'flare', but curved straight back towards the rider;
(2) a replacement rear hub to enable back-pedal braking; and
(3) a dynamo and headlight/taillight combo.
I only ever got #3, and no tail-light. Never rode it after dusk.
Bikes with back-pedal brakes were awesome for doing skids.
I remember that & that's why Raleigh made the sissy bar smaller on the new chopper because they knew that full grown men would be riding about on bikes that we're designed for boys so Raleigh didn't go into the safety thing to much because the new chopper was aimed at the nostalgic market.
I had one, 50 years ago. Didn't know they are still made. Great fun.
Struggling up a climb in the early '70's on my yellow mk1 Chopper & group of 20+ road cyclists took pity on me & they pushed me up the hill. It was the fastest I'd ever gone on my bike! 50 yrs ago & I remember it as though it was yesterday. Loved my Chopper but they were definately built for show not go.
I had a chopper in the Seventies and loved it.
Clipless pedals? Brilliant touch. I love these goofy vids. They're lekke.
i had one,my parents brought it to Athens from London summer of 1972 ,same colour .It still makes the rider look fantastic.Not even modern TT bikes can beat it on this.😊
loved the vid , the best cheer`s / shout`s of the day without dout
Proper cycling content! ❤️😊
Dave Simms rode the TDF route on a chopper
Sam Pilgrim proved you can do downhill MTB on a chopper. Now you've proven it can do hill climbs too. Raleigh choppers are clearly the dream!
EPIC!
I wated one of these so much in1973.
Love. Desire, envy.
I never did get one, my parents bought a 'sensible' bike for me, that weighed a ton and had no gears.
The solidness and lack of gimmicky would have been selling points for my dad.
Had one of these in Calgary, tricky to ride. Grew up in Nottingham, mate crashed his new Chopper giving someone a croggy (early 1970's). Walked it to the Raleigh gates, chap said hold on a minute, and wheeled him a brand new one. No questions. Brilliant time on that.
I never had one, but I never really stopped wanting one. A few of my mates had them in the mid-70s.
They felt heavy and slow back then. They probably don't compare well to my Trek Domane 5 SL Carbon. I realise that, even though I could afford one now, it's probably better I leave it as a dream.
I had one as a 14 year old, it was a nightmare!, horrible bike!.
I would have killed for a mk 1 chopper in 1969 when i was ten. The hurt stuck with me all my life, even though now i have a cannondale system six,
a cannondale super six evo, a Trek Speed Concept and a Dunlop Hotta TT bike amongst many others but i didn't have a Raleigh Chopper. The hurt stopped when i bought my Mk 4 Chopper during this summer as a 64 year old. Sad but true Ultra Violet with 70's length sissy bar as an accessory. You should see the curtains twitch when i ride it but who cares,
I am living the dream lol.
That looked absolutely horrendous!... Never ever try going back down that hill on it though my friend. Massive speed wobble/tank slapper... I’ve just turned 60 and I’ve still got the scars.
the American Scwhinn version used a mid sized cruiser style frame, but towards the end, they also attached a" looks like a car shifter" , clamped to the frame in the right place for pain. . Schwinns were flawlessly finished, but the hidden attraction was double walled steel rims, so dad never had to bother with truing the rims. Buy one and you are done, almost kid proof.
Gorgeous Raleigh!
That was so much fun to watch, I'm smiling and recalling my years of climbing up hills on my Schwinn Sting-Ray, the bike in my thumbnail in early '75 in Frankfurt in the final months of a seven-year run which began in '67 in San Francisco on my 8th birthday and a surprise trip with my Dad to a bike shop near Golden Gate Park. And even now, I'm thinking about buying a new BMX bike, one with a long frame, and installing a banana seat and riding it for fun as a flat track bike in parking lots. We used to race like that on our Sting-Rays and talk about intense, but that's the thing about those bikes, you have to be intense to make them go fast and my Sting-Ray served me well in that regard, I learned all the fundamentals of on- and -off-road riding and my legs and lungs got mighty fit from all those efforts, lots of standing and straining and sprinting, with, certainly, plenty of cruising and coasting. Thanks again for this leg-busting display inspired by the Raleigh Chopper. 😀
I also have found memories of my stingray days. Those bike were super durable, built to be ready for childhood abuse. The one that didn't;t get stolen, my last one had a " drag slick " tire on the back that attracted punctures like crazy, and was dangerous in the rain, but I didn't care, it looked cool to a kid. I learned a lot about primitive liquid sealant back then. I was aware of wrenches, but applied them to bicycles only if the tube really had to be changed. .
@@richardelliott8352 Thanks for sharing that story and yes, the Sting-Ray was not the greatest bike of all time, but it was the greatest bike of its time, that decade or so before the BMX bikes it inspired and the explosion of that scene. And as my thumbnail indicates, i was still riding mine at the age of 15, it was my final year, and it prepared me well for BMX bikes and motorcycles as a year later, '76 as an American teen military dependent high schooler in Frankfurt, West Germany, I imported a CYC Stormer BMX bike and purchased locally, for $200 dollars from a friend, a ''73 250 Maico with a coffin tank, plus a an Italian-made 175 street-legal Harley for on-and-off-road use. But it was the Sting-Ray that I rode like crazy over an eight-year period, beginning in '67 in San Francisco and flying down those steep streets as an eight-year-old and happily zig-zagging back up to do it again and again. And I saw Evel Knievel perform in Southern California in '71 and, well, we all know his influence over every kid with a Sting-Ray. 😀
Shame it wasn't a MK1 with the bars canted way back, the way we used to have them ... that would have been fun trying to keep the front wheel on the ground.
That Chopper is in beautiful nick.
I'm impressed you got road pedals screwed into those crank arms (Look Keo's?). Anyway, well done. Next time try it on your little sister's Kmart Barbie bike. Nice work!😁
I was too, a lot of those bikes used a one piece crank with a different thread series for the pedals. Maybe this had an old two piece cotter crank, or the swapped the whole thing out.
@@emmett1ishI think you're right. Looking closer, that's not a one piece crank arm. Either way, pretty funny. Kind of reminds me of my first bike, which was a Mongomery Wards knock-off of a Schwinn Stingray. I loved that thing!
@@emmett1ish Raleigh never ever made bikes with one piece cranks. Nether did anyone else in the UK or europe.
Front wheel wobble on a Chopper going downhill fast was lethal!
I have the scars to prove it!, dreadful bike.
I still have the scars to prove it.
This was awesome. Fantastic work! Got my respect managing that!
You missed an opportunity for handlebar streamers and cards in spokes.
In the 80s you could guarantee that at some stage while going up hill the thing would slip it’s gears and your nuts would make sharp contact with the gear stick. Agony and made even worse if the plastic parts had come off and only the metal remained. Brave man.
Excellent, but would now like to see it done on a Raleigh Grifter, my bike of choice in the 70's (well my parents choice really for my Christmas). A mountain bike before mountain bikes and a bmx before the bmx :-)
Had one of them, they were very cool.
I was too short for a Grifter in the 70's had to have the smaller Striker!
@@andreww2098 Striker? I never heard of that one (though an apt name for a bike from the 70's 🙂). My little brother had the Raleigh Boxer?
@@anticat900 misremembered the spelling it was the Raleigh Strika, not striker, similar to the boxer but had off road tyres and fake front shocks
the advertising logo was a footballer kicking a ball with "Raleigh Strika it's a winner!"
@@andreww2098 That does sound cooler than my original thought 🙂. Just had a look, yep a cool bike for the time, huge saddles though. They went to alot effort to create pretend front shocks, are they really completely false, no springs i them at all?
he said the course record was just over 1 minute. 0.56 miles at that time makes that about 30mph. so thats clearly wrong
Strava shows 1:20 as the record 30.7 kph over 0.68km.
That was a great laugh, thanks.
As someone who learned to ride a bike on a Chopper, it was nice to see one in a race like this. 🙂
That looked so.much fun 🎉
Ah, the gear change lever! ‘It’s a steep hill, it’s climb-tabulous, You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet! Let’s rock!’
There must be an angle of hill when a Chopper spontaneously tips over backwards. My most enduring memory of the Chopper was the ease of pulling a wheelie, most of which ended up with you smacking your head on the pavement.
The Mk I Chopper would wheely or tip backwards constantly. Later ones, like the one in the video, had a dog leg seat stay to help prevent this.
I had a red Raleigh chopper in the seventies. Very heavy and unstable.
I loved it. Until I broke the frame jumping.
Did Swain's Lane on a Boris Bike (just to tick it off the Top 100 Climbs list) - can appreciate the effort of lugging 18kg up it. Chapeau
My brother and I both had the same bike!!! What great times!!!
Outrageously fun. Thanks for this.
I miss my Chopper so much!!
As a kid on a chopper bike we used to ride left and right to ease getting up the hill it worked
The R Chopper is a lounger on wheels, made to be sat on then the lower gears used for "takeoff" to your leisurely ride in the neighborhood. The envy came from banana-seat 20" wheel riders and Huffy 26" wheel heavy steel bikes.
I was envious of a neighbour's Grifter as a wee boy. Choppers were for the bigger boys. 😂
It looked brand new!
Hahaha I loved this video and I love my Thursday delivery of Cycling Weekly so I’m subscribing! ❤
😂😂 Me and my brother used to cycle from Shoeburyness to Canvey do 2 hours of Judo and ride up the Essex way and home! me on a 3 gear racer and my brother on a Chopper 34 mile round trip !!
Luxury! You were lucky! Our family of six had to use one pogo stick, to hop 60miles t' pit, work 36 hours, and then share a single Rice Crispy for supper....
This should be an olympic event. One make and brand, more competitive.
That is a lightweight Raleigh Chopper, it only has a short sissy bar - easy !
I know the grifter was 35kg a real boys bike 💪
I remember regularly dragging my Chopper to the local welder to fix my handlebars and forks.
1976 I was racing up and down Baths hills on a rally chopper
"I crashed down on the cross bar, and the pain was enough, to make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder..." - Morrissey. This is one cross bar you don't want to crash down on! The Raleigh Chopper, probably responsible for the brief decline in male fertility in the 1990's! 😂
When me & my big brother were kids in the 60's/70's we had a mate who was an only child & he got everything he asked for including a brand new Chopper. There were 4 kids in our house, me, my big brother & 2 bigger sisters so money was tight. We mithered Dad for Raleigh Choppers for Christmas & I'll never forget running down the stairs with our kid to see 2 big cardboard boxes & we were buzzing that we'd got a Chopper each until we opened them up to find 2 yellow cheapo copies called 'High Riser'. God knows where Mam & Dad found them become Wish wasn't invented then. 😂
My memories of a Raleigh Chopper…..
Bad points - side stand used to continually break its locking pin meaning the stand just folded forward and was basically useless, and the gear cable would undo itself causing the bike to jump out of gear causing your knees to whack the handlebars.
Good points - none really!
The Chopper was pretty heavy so that’s impressive. Should have taken a Chipper which was lighter and had much better balance 😁
I used to own one of these bikes. I thought it was pretty cool looking at the time
had that bike as a kid. They are worth good money if mint and original
I had one of those in the 80's. It wasn't cool...but it had 3 speeds! And 3 is massively better than 1 speed! I remember getting it at a garage sale, but not much else. I must not have had it for very long.
Born in 1959. I wanted one of these SO BAD! My parents gave me a green Sears 3 speed instead.
Back in the day, when I was a kid, I just wished that the Chopper was as fast as it looked.
I had one of these in red, my handlebar stem snapped, got replaced, plus resprayed red, funkiest gears ever, used to put lolly sticks in back brakes to clatter on spokes, if only I had a time machine 🤪
ET!? That movie was full of BMX bikes, it made those very popular. The Chopper was out of fashion by then.
If you guys want to make this a regular thing, I’ll turn up on my 1968 Raleigh RSW 16 next year! Or my1970…
we used to get 5 kids on chopper bike just to go to footy in the 80s;)
choppers were an amazing bike. wish i had kept mine from the 70's as they worth about £1000 quid now
I preferred the Grifter though
As a youngster I used to ride a Chopper down what the local club used for the annual hill climb, you could hit around 50 on the first section and well over that on the 2nd. I was daft and stupid but survived, certainly felt nearer to death's door a few years later when I joined the local club and went up the hill on my first proper 'racing' bike.
How could you do 50 on a Chopper without the speed-wobble catapulting you to oblivion? I'm calling BS!
@@FFM0594 I don't live near enough to oblivion to be catapulted there.
Cool video/effort!! but why not use a 5spd?
I'm a 80s kid and never had a Raleigh Chopper.. this is gonna be funny
My dream bike as a kid 😊👍
Lose the kickstand and you'll gain a minute!👍🤣
Never got one when I was younger. still the best bike of the time
He’d have won it on a Stingray!
I've got to say when i was 10 on my Mk2 Raleigh chopper, I'd have got up that hill a piece of piss beano in one hand bag of sweets in the other 🤣🤣
This bicycle is the Mk2. The Mk1 had a centre of gravity even further back.
I've always wanted one! Not for hill climbing though!
I got a Mk.1 Chopper for Christmas in 1970; round sissy bar and knob rather than T gear shift.
As a matter of interest I was born on the other side of Highgate Cemetary, Highgate West Hill.
wasn't allowed a bike as a lad, so yeah, Christmas 1970 was the year when some lads got either a Chopper MK1 Tomahawk or Tracker
other lads put Cow Horn handle-bars on "anything" with 2 wheels
in those days it was all about who could make the longest back brake skids
why am i here ? ,,, not because i was was a west end cycle courier in the late 80s
oh because, i probably made the worlds 1st "fake" Rolls Royce Bike
th-cam.com/video/GYf5H5NQ4Ls/w-d-xo.htmlsi=kOOlyWb79i3iTl_l
@@bean9seventy I had a mate Mario who was a West End cycle courier in the mid to late 80s. Used to ride a white Muddy Fox...
@@davefave4351 cycle couriers made mountain bikes & cycling popular again ,,
some were so far down the line they built their own bike taxis ? now an industry
great times , sadly can no longer turn a crank, but still cycle, all passive ,,
i started off with a barn freewheel racer from my dad ,,,
muddy fox, rock hoppers, was a No1 bike
any time we saw a "Hornet Courier" it was
" Fish On" ,,, & race like lunatics,
no limits, no rules, pavements, red lights one way streets, holding on to cars vans buses taxis HGVs anything & everything,
i was a beast ,, never changed gears even uphill, for many years never even had brakes ,,, i still don't ,, but
will never ride a fix wheel, They are dangerous ,, ; D
That's what I had even heavier when the gear knob was robed was lethal if you slipped forward
That's me on the Brompton 😉 (did it in 2:11)
A big wheel at the back, and a small wheel at the front .That's like riding down hill. So 10% climb becomes 5% .
For modern day cycling this is the only time you will get older people invested in it. I don’t include the thin and scrawny Eddie Merx look alike we see out trying to retain their Yoof…
But I must express my concern that in the opening moments the rider is in completely inappropriate apparel. Skin tight Lycra just wasn’t available to the masses back in the Chopper era. It was consigned to the back wardrobes of the Soho emporiums (and probably still is).
The rider should be in the correct red (faded to pink - thanks Mum) loon pants, a brightly coloured Brutus shirt with a collar that gave aerodynamic lift above 15 mph and to top it off a knitted tank top of a multi colour variant ensuring you could be seen some two miles away. Of course there was no such thing as a crash helmet. Them pesky motorcyclists were only mandated to wear them in 1973 and it’s still a matter of choice in today’s nannified world.
There you have it. I’m back off to my safe Tory seat to harrumph from the back benches.
Edited: of course no Tory MP would have ever had a Chopper, for once they were for the masses and Tory boy would have had a Claude Butler racing bike built for him by the family’s faithful retainer.
Can't remember this beeing in ET.