Tsolaro,
I hope this doesn't hijack your thread, but since you asked, that's my son's bike. He had been looking for a Stingray, and was frustrated that the only bikes he could find were girl's frames. Then he spotted this bike in the local classifieds. It was advertised as a Stingray, but was obviously modified as a BMX. In fact, it turned out to be a '77 Tornado, which was Schwinn's late (and lame) entry into the BMX market. A bit of research showed that it is the same frame that Schwinn had been using for many years as the mini Typhoon, which Al Fritz famously turned into the Stingray. This bike wasn't even rideable when my son bought it. Fork bearings were terminally rusted and seized inside the head tube. It was a real basket case! He disassembled it completely, stripped and sanded the frame and repainted it in black, shot red on the front, clear coated it, cleaned the chrome chain ring, re-greased the crank bearings and reassembled the crank assembly, then rebuilt the bike using all new repop parts. It's now a fairweather rider, and he calls it a 'Ray.
"A bike is only original once, when it's new". Sheldon Brown
Here is the seller's ad photo, and one showing the frame sanded clean.
