Cowhorns

Noticed a thread yesterday about bar widths and i remembered back to my teen/ school days about a craze that we all took up. we removed our racer dropped bars and fitted wide upswept bars known as cowhorns.

I can remember having to reach further down the bars to use the brakes as we couldn’t be bothered to change the cables.

This must have been 79 to 81-ish.

The bike was a Coventry Eagle and I resprayed it in a Chrysler Grasshopper green.No photos though.
I suppose this was something that came over from the states re Klunkerz

Yep I had several “cowhorned” bikes, the only one I can name is a Raleigh Arena. I’m sure they were MX bars god knows how we fitted them to road stems!

not sure what u mean
something like these bullhorn handle bars
mavic tt’s i think

I had my brothers Carlton Corsa with massive cowhorns, but went the whole hog and changed the cables too, broke my front tooth on it when I rode into a parked car!

I had a Raleigh Arena!! but it was a small wheeled one, 24″ wheels I think. I could wheelie the thing for miles..

Y’see that’s not em for me .Cowhorns were gert big wide things that went on such as Raleigh Arenas. Tops 5,you from Todmorden by any chance?

No colande, think real cow/sweapt back!

More like this

Middle one

Edit
tch, didnt work hang on

<http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c296/Alecw35/95group26.jpg&gt;

When we all had Choppers (late ’70s) one lad in our “crew” had a cowhorn equiped bike, cant remember much about it, but the bars were HUGE and he used to have trouble steering it.

Colande, much like the american beach cruiser type of bars.. (not quite so swept back)

In the late 80’s i cut the bottoms of my CW BMX bars and put them on my Sun Solo to make my own calfhorns.

Duntstick – that middle one’s how I remember them – think I had renthal MX bars. Not from Tod, Barrow-in-Furness originally and now St. Helens – why?

yup, i had a pair on my kalkhoff coupe de monde purple 5 speed racer. It was a logical progression from turning the drop handlebars up.

You young uns!!We (50 plus merchants) were doing that to road bikes (5 speed mind) in the mid to late 60s and going dirt tracking!!!

I remember a few of the older local lads having cowhorned bikes. I also recall bullhorns which were really wide. They all used knobblys too rather than road tyres. I was still on a Grifter whilst this was going on. It’s funny, that after been at the Gary Fisher thing recently, it would seem that this development of bikes was taking place all over.

One lad by the name of Jimmy Labdon used to do all sorts of stuff with bikes, He used to run two wheels on the front (like a lefty but fixed to one end of the hub on the outside of the forks). He was the first person I ever knew to fit a sidecar too. I think it is probably him that I have to thank for my liking of all things too wheeled.

They were called ‘Trackers’ in North Manchester. Moston Cycles & Brennans at Queens Park sold the bars IIRC.

Like Chase I was stuck on a Grifter at the time, but remember that all the cool older kids had them – only a rear brake, knobblies and optional shorty mudguards. Some were singlespeeds too I think…………

I still fancy one now.

Can't seem to load up up the pics….

WTF thread ressurection batman

I had a BSA Tour of Britain with DT175 bars on. Wider then any bars i see nowadays, and it was singlespeed as i wrapped the rear mech in my back wheel. Just shortened the chain using a screwdriver and hammer.