#107 JAY HARDY’S 1976 GARY FISHER KLUNKER
Original Repack racer hand-built by the grandfather of mountain biking
Superbikes don’t go back much further in the history of our great sport than this one. Built in 1976 by Gary Fisher and hand-painted by Charlie Kelly, this machine really has been touched by two of mountain biking’s founding fathers. And now this historical piece – possibly the first ‘klunker’ in Europe – lives on in the safe hands of former BMX and MTB pro Jay Hardy.
Tough enough for Mt Tam
A brief history lesson may be required for those not around when the birth of mountain biking occurred. The Repack was a downhill trail on the sides of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. It was here that a bunch of hippies got together in the early 1970s to run timed races on old beach cruisers, which weren’t especially well equipped to survive the rough two-mile drop to the finish.
The early coaster brakes produced so much heat that they needed to be repacked with bearing grease before each run – hence the name. Riders began modifying their bikes for the racing, using road and motorbike parts, and even building custom frames, as here. These hybrid beasts became known as ‘klunkers’.
What you’re looking at is the pinnacle of downhill tech circa 1976/77. The double top tube design was commonplace at the time, used on the Schwinn Excelsior cruiser that formed the base for many klunkers, and helped reinforce the curvy steel frame. Component-wise, it was a time of experimentation, as riders tried to achieve a bombproof build. Parts were scavenged from other bikes and skips, and ridden hard until the strongest option was found.
This incredible period piece sports a wide, backswept ‘longhorn’ bar (1), for control when getting loose around the hairpins, clamped in a ‘gooseneck’ stem. The brake levers were commandeered from a motorcycle (2) – you can see the threads for fitting wing mirrors. A little comfort is added by a sprung Brooks B72 leather saddle. Stopping is taken care of by Sturmey-Archer drum-brake hubs (3).
It was when riders started fitting gears and riding back up to the top of the hill that these bikes truly became the forerunners to the mass-produced MTB. Here, a SunTour VX rear mech moves up and down a five-speed, 14-38t cassette (4). There was no indexing – instead, the thumbshifters, branded ‘Mighty Shifter’, work on friction (5).
The 26in wheels (based on Schwinn S2 tubular rims) and fat tyres (these are
Uniroyal Nobbys, at US$3 a piece!) were to become standard fare for decades, too. However, the crankset is a classic road bike piece, with 52t and 42t rings, and Maxy-branded 171mm cranks. There’s no dropper post on this beauty – saddle height is adjusted via the oversize T-bar at the seat clamp. Even the Hite-Rite gizmo was a pipedream in the mid ’70s! According to Gary Fisher, the bike “looks just the same as when I shipped it!”.
The wrong bike... but even better
This bike was built for British journalist Richard Grant, who would go on to start Bicycle Action magazine and co-author
Richards’ Ultimate Bicycle Book.
While Richard was in America in 1977, he met and rode bikes with Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher. Blown away by how fun this new sport was, he broached his idea of producing an MTB magazine. Kelly advised him to make a BMX mag instead and BMX Action Bike was born. Jay Hardy, one of the original BMX racers, became one of the title’s bike testers.
“I used to see a bike propped up in the offices,” says Jay, an early convert to MTB, who raced pro XC and DH before working in the bike industry and festival business. “When Richard told me he had Parkinson’s disease and was terminally ill, I knew
I had to buy it as a keepsake of my old friend and mentor.” Jay successfully bid for Richard’s Gary Fisher – only to discover that it wasn’t the bike he’d seen all those years before (actually an old Ritchey). “Turns out the bike I bought is even better and more unique than I thought,” says Jay. “I was in competition to purchase it, because of its place in MTB history. I can’t tell you how much I parted with for it!”
What really sets this bike apart is its winged ‘Live to Ride, Ride to Live’ head badge sticker, which, legend has it, was only granted to the inner circle of Repack racers. The other sticker on the seat tube bears the moniker ‘Sunshine Bicycles’ and refers to the Fairfax, CA, bike store of the same name; you can see Charlie Kelly in a Sunshine hat in many photos from the era.
This machine is the genesis of the mountain bikes we ride today. Gary Fisher and Charlie Kelly would go on to coin the name ‘MountainBike’ as a brand for selling Tom Ritchey’s frames, and the rest, as the cliché goes, is history. We owe them every time we ride!
INFO
Price/contact: You’ll be lucky! Gary Fisher klunkers do occasionally pop up on internet auction sites. Also try: Transition Bikes brought out a modern take on the klunker in 2013. You may find one second-hand.