Welcome to Schwiing’s Page! What in the world is a Schwiing you might ask? Well if ya grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s you probably rode a Schwinn Stingray. And if your love of two-wheeled machines transferred to motorcycles like mine did then you probably had a least one vertical twin in your catalog of bikes.
The British invasion of vertical twins after WWII brought us Triumphs, BSAs, Nortons, Ariels and many others. Their lower cost and growing market share helped drive Indian out of business. Honda followed suit in 60’s with CB/CL series. Then, almost last to the game, was Yamaha and the XS650s. However, in retrospect, Yamaha had brought their “A” game with the XS650s and they remained a popular format into the 80’s even with competition from the inline-four-cylinder craze. They were light and reliable, they had tons of torque, they were easy to work on and modify. Today they are very desirable again by builders as a foundation for anything from cafe bikes, flat track bikes and bobbers… for all the same reasons.
Schwiing is a combination of those two ingredients. First; the classic shape of the Schwinn Stingray frame which mimics the classic hardtail frame found on many V-twin and vertical twin motorcycles up to the early 50’s. Second; a good sounding and pleasing-to-look-at power plant that is the XS650. I’ve had this bike pictured in my mind’s eye for quite sometime. Getting to a point where I could actually pull the time and the resources together to build it was the hardest challenge.
Just over a year ago I started looking for a good donor bike. I shopped the moto-classifieds and eBay until I snagged a 3400 mile donor bike from Omaha, Nebraska. The bike had been low-sided and high-sided in the same crash but the pipes and the pegs sustained all the damage. So, I got a good bike that I didn’t have to feel bad about robbing the power plant and parting out the rest. It also made the price more project worthy. Neighbor Rob Nuckols(Nuck) made the trip with me to Omaha and back to pick it up. The picture in the header is just after we crossed the bridge into Iowa. That’s Nebraska out the rear window of the truck and Schwiing pointed towards its new home in Indiana.