No doubt. My first ride of more than a few feet was on a Schwinn 24" (1976). This was after countless hours trying to tame my 16", plastic-tire Troxel P.O.S. The difference was night and day. If your Monkey Ward unicycle had a pneumatic tire, it was a step up from mine at leastā¦
My understanding was that the Schwinn unicycles came out in 1967. But you are not the first person to assert 1966 or earlier, so I wonder when they actually hit the market. Could it have been your 11th birthday?
Cottered means cotter pins holding the cranks on. Thatās how bikes (and unicycles) were made back then. As for updating your unicycle today, truly the easiest thing to do it replace it. The Schwinns used nonstandard rims (common tires donāt fit) and 28-hole hubs. To restore yours, you could also buy one like it from eBay and part the two of them together!
Schwinn update: Last week I got to add another country to the list of places where Iāve ridden a unicycle. In front of a little ice cream shop in Placencia, Belize, I clamored aboard an ancient Schwinn 20" (belonging to the shopās owner). It was rusty, the tire showed threads, the cranks were welded on, and one of the pedals was little more than a shaft. And it had the 9" seat post, making it way low for me. But I rode it around to impress the kids. Had I been wearing something more robust than flip-flops I would have been a little more interesting to watch, but at least I didnāt embarrass myself.
I got my first uni, a 24" Schwinn for Christmas in the early 70s. Our whole street had them, all Schwinns. Weād have football and basketball games on them. Had a short obstical course you had to do to be āin the clubā. Then I rode it to college up in Berkeley, then parked it for 20 some years. Started riding again 5 years when I bought a KH 24 MUni. Still have the Schwinn in nice shape, part of a 5 uni quiver.
My first unicycle, a 24" Schwinn, was purchased in 1977 from Stuyvesant Bicycles, then on the corner of 14th St and 1st Avenue as I recall. I learned to ride on it after attempts on a friends Sears quality model resulted in a wobbly, unstable hub and failed.
I rode that Schwinn around the lower east side, Greenwich Village and Washington Square Park and later on trips around Times Square delivering photos from the AP to the New York Times and Daily News. (The Times let me take the unicycle up to the newsroom but the Daily News made me leave it in the lobby).
I gave it away years later during one of many moves to various apartments in Brooklyn.
After years of not riding, at the age of 38 I purchased two new Schwinns, a 24" and 20", from a bike shop in Shrewsbury New Jersey. (The owner commented that he gets business from clowns in circuses that sometimes pass through). I still have both.
The JIS taper of the mid '80ās Schwinns is the same as modern square taper unicycle cranks, but the pedal thread was 1/2" which is a bit abnormal (normal for American one piece cranks). So, if you get new square taper cranks you will most likely need new pedals as well.
Iām on my second Schwinn. The first was a 20" S7, and the current one is a 24x1.75 model with the blue rim and seat.
Growing up in Chicago I was around a lot of Schwinn uniās. My brother had one with cottered cranks, but I never learned to ride it. It was a dream to ride, and a couple of years ago I stumbled on my first Schwinn at a thrift store for $10. That was the beginingā¦
