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Anyone here own a Miami / Flying Merkel Bicycle?

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It seems the Merkle's color was yellow before they landed on orange...or maybe this reporter was color blinded from snorting too much exhaust fumes at the motorcycle race track? ;);)

43866c653bbc4ad58f24c0e16ded831f-1.jpg

Here's a 1910 ad, parenthetically referring to the Merkel nickname:

yellow streak merkel.jpg


And here's Merkel's most accomplished racer, Maldwyn Jones, photographed in Mansfield, Ohio, in 1913 and still wearing on his jersey what I suspect was the unofficial "mascot" of the Merkel non-team, the bumblebee insignia:

flying merkel rider.jpg


(Notice the similarity of the rear fender to Patric's unusual bike featured on the first page of this thread.)

"Maldwyn Jones was another member of that group of turn-of-the-century boys whose lives revolved around motorcycles. Like Jim Davis who won a pair of rubber goggles and Otto Walker who brought home a turkey, Maldwyn never forgot his first prize: a .22 caliber repeating rifle which he won at an Ohio county fair in 1909. Jones continued to compete in amateur events, and in 1911 (when he was 20 years-old) he went to work for the motorcycle manufacturer Joseph Merkel, whose plant was just a few miles down the road from Maldwyn's hometown of Lebanon, Ohio.

At the time, Merkel did not have a factory team, but after Jones demonstrated an aptitude for winning races, Merkel gave his tacit approval for Maldwyn to work on racing machinery during working hours at the plant. Still, the Merkel company did not have a full-fledged race department or even a team, just Jones and a few others employed by the company, who rode either antiquated Merkel racing equipment (left over from as far back as 1905) or mostly stock examples of the road-going Flying Merkel that the company sold to the public.

Maldwyn was both resourceful and mechanically gifted. In 1913, he adapted an over-head valve head from a Jefferson motorcycle to fit the Merkel cylinder and went racing on the 1/2-mile dirt tracks on which he was most adept. Maldwyn's luck was not great in the longer races, however. In 1913, an erroneous lap count deprived him of a win at the Savanna 300-mile road race, and in 1914, he was again in the lead at Savannah when his locally-hired pit crew allowed him to run out of gas at the far side of the track."

http://www.statnekov.com/motorcycles/lives21.html
 
The "Star" Chainring wasn't proprietary to the Merkel…but used on several marques.

Example: three Miami Motorbikes but only one's a Merkel.
ScreenShot2014-07-02at93043PM.png


Screen%20Shot%202015-03-24%20at%207.51.54%20PM.png


Screen%20Shot%202016-02-12%20at%209.26.25%20PM.png
 
I think your right Carlton! The frames look a bit different, are they?

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
 
Yes there are differences.

No, they appear to be the same bikes but they're different...picture 1 is a Miami "Star"
ScreenShot2013-10-12at53514PM.png

Screen%20Shot%202016-02-13%20at%206.14.26%20AM_1.png


Picture 2 is a Miami "Miami"
ScreenShot2013-12-29at104509AM.png

ScreenShot2013-12-29at104409AM.png

I own/ed those two. I have pics of the frames side by side, believe that pic is posted in this thread....many posts ago....The other Merkel bike is Vaughn's, and I brought the frame that is shown in the 2nd pic, (on the bench) to Memory Lane 2014 and Patric, Vaughn and I compared them, they appear to be the same. That one is stamped '17. The Star one believe is a later frame '20 or '21. Pics sometimes appear different than in person.
Nick
 
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A few somewhat random images of Flying Merkel racers...

1914, Maldwyn Jones on the left, Cleo Pineau, center:

At the line 1914 Toledo.jpg


1913, Maldwyn Jones:

flying merkel racer2.jpg


1914, Cleo Pineau:

Flying Merkel Racer.jpg


"Cleo Pineau was the son of Thomas L. and Adele Gstalder Pineau. He was a restless youth, and dropped out of school in sixth grade. He was a motorcycle racer before World War I. He raced Flying Merkel and Indian Motorcycles, once defeating Barney Oldfield. He also rode in the "Globe of Death" motordrome as a vaudeville performer.

He joined the Royal Flying Corps in December 1917, and trained at the Curtis Aviation School in Buffalo, New York. He was assigned to 210 Squadron on 2 June 1918. Between 6 September and 8 October 1918, he used a Sopwith Camel to destroy four Fokker D.VIIs and drive down two others. Following his sixth win, he was shot down by a Fokker Triplane near Roulers and fell into captivity as a prisoner of war.

Pineau went back to motorcycle racing in the 1920s, winning many world motordrome records. Pineau did not leave aviation behind. He was instrumental in founding the Williamsport-Lycoming County Airport, and fostered it through his connections in the aviation community, including a friendship with Wiley Post.

He began the Radiant Steel company in 1927 or 1928, as a spinoff from Darling Valve and Manufacturing Company. By 1948, he was its president; he served in this capacity until he retired in 1969. He died in 1972."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_Francis_Pineau
 
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