Classic.
The first mountain bike do you reckon?
I had one of these, better than the standard grifter because it had a proper seat not some foam rubbish that a bigger boy thought it was fun to rip to bits.

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=111340121276

Bomber was the first proper mtb, the Grifter was the first proper bmx.

I had one of those – my first ever ‘proper’ bike. The mudguards and rack were off within hours despite my mum telling me I was ruining it!

You could only have two gears running at any one time – utterly impossible to adjust the Sturmey Archer to get all three. I abused mine to death – the forks ended up bent so far back that it became dangerous to ride.

I had an xl, I was gutted as I was promised an ultra burner.
It was quickly stolen from outside my local swimming pool so was back on my tomahawk before building up an old super tuff frame.

Growing up raleigh was the ford of the bike industry, kiddies bikes anyway,
We had grifters, choppers. strikers and boxers before the mighty burner .

Shame they don’t make bikes here anymore.

I had a commando – looking at it now it’s not a cool as I remember it. Internal cable routing though!

Al – BMX predates the Grifter. Grifters were first made in 76, Mongoose Motomags were 75.

The Burner was Raleigh’s first attempt at a BMX. The Grifter was way to heavy to be of any use as a BMX. I remember my mate had one and we built some ramps for it but it just ploughed through them. I had a Striker which was a smaller and lighter version. The Boxer was even smaller and probably the closest to a BMX at that time, but still pre-dated them.

The Grifter seem smaller than I remembered it.

Little know fact:

The Grifter was in fact made of lead.

But if you bent the mud flaps into the tyre you had a motorbike.

rureadyboots – Member
Little know fact:

The Grifter was in fact made of lead.

With angry snakes as cranks 😆

My non XL Grifter weighed 42lbs, and at least the cranks and the forks may well have been lead judging by how easily they bent.

SOM – I know, I was being silly.

I don’t remember my grifter being heavy, it did make a good motorbike though!

oh and those lovely Ever Ready lights too!

I bloody loved my Grifter.

4 gears –
Red
Yellow
Blue
And ‘slip’ 🙂

I had that exact bike. Boy it was heavy. Good for towing my brother and other older kids on roller blades. I also bent one of my cranks by bottoming a pedal during “slalom practice”

Every Grifter had bent cranks. It was just that you got used to the particular bend on yours and when you rode a mates the different bend on his felt weird.

I had a Grifter with a Puch Maxi upsidedown suspension fork and front wheel grafted to it in 1980/81.
I recon that was the start of propper MTB’s.
In fact the lad I got it off used to beat Rob Warner in the first dual/DH races they ran in the UK.

History

The original. Also, bang on trend re wheel size.

Read on, and learn about the real origin of what we now call mountain bikes.

I remember leaving a grifter tyre mark across the forehead of my mate when I didn’t quite clear the 5 kids who were lying down on the floor after the ramp we’d built. 😆

CFH.
There were loads of local lads trying to build what we now now as MTB’s back in the early 80’s.
Most of us were from Mx/ Trails/ Enduro upbringings. 😉

Indeed, Stu. Geoff was doing it from 79, iirc.

If only there’d been this modern internet shizz where people could have compared what they had discovered it might have all happened so much quicker. 😐

Yep, very much so! Letters to Fairfax took a while! Holy Toledo, it was slow…….

😉

Your so full o shite. 😀

Stu, it was a reference to a letter from the very early days, not from me!

Your still full o shite. 😀
But entertaining shite none the less. 8)

😀

Grifter pics bring back memories! Would never have guessed it was 42lbs though I do remember it being a bitch to pedal up hills.
Mine is still buried in my parents garage along with my Burner and a pair of Raleigh Budgies!
Are they worth anything?

My Grifter ‘tridem’. It was lethal…forks attached to front bike via the mudguard eyelets…

https://flic.kr/p/bAqNdM%5B\img]

I give up, stupid flickr not playing nice with smartphones[\img]

Was that meant to be ‘Grifter predates the BMX’?

Edit: Sorry, I was on a Raleigh thang. I was thinking Burners when you never mentioned burners, only the word bmx!

Budgies were the one to have. Rare as these days compared to the others.

I learnt to ride on a tomahawk. Can still picture me wobbling down the road with my step dad running along side.

Those brake cable lengths would never pass today’s aesthetic rules regarding bicycles.

Those brake cable lengths would never pass today’s aesthetic rules regarding bicycles.

They did however permit easy use of riding with the bars & forks rotated the wrong way just for giggles and shits.

Not surprising kids today are facing a life of obesity, then never had the joy of riding bikes made from scaffold pipe and lead weighing in at nearly the same as the equivalent small family hatchback at the time.

The fun you could have with a Grifter a plank of wood and some house bricks.
I had a blue series 2 loved the prismatic decals.

Light blue series 1.
God, I loved that bike – I can even remember the smell when it was new.

And the slipping gears?
How did any of us remain fertile?

Remember the captive nut (seatpost?) with embossed red ‘R’ on it?
I thought that was proper classy.