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does anyone remember the bike that sears use to sell called the allstate??? i have been looking for pics or info on them and its like they never were??? back in the 60s my neighboor had one and we rode the p!!! outa that thing, it was heavy but indistructable. had a spring seat on the back for the passenger with a big looping handle to hold onto. i think it was 175cc or 250 cant remember?? my neighber was 250lbs in 10th grade and that thing would haul him and i around like it was just me on it. it was his dads but we all used to ride it. the engine had a similer look to an ariel 4. it was one of the first bikes i ever rode. my friend recently passed away (600lbs heart attack, go figure) and i was talkin to his uncle ( who is a strick Triumph guy) first time i have talked to him in yrs, and i was telling him about my America and the passion i have for her, we talked about the new Rocket and he asked about my 72 and we got to talkin about that allstate and how his brother (my friends dad who passed many yrs ago) had let all us kids in the hood learn how to ride on that bike.

I owned a Allstate moped in 1963-64 and sold it to buy a Honda 50. I definietly remember the motorbike section at the Sears stores. Most all I can remember had red as the primary color. Sears also used to sell boats and outboard motors. Funny how the store changed. No Silvertone guitars and amps either!

yep!!! his was a very dark shade of red!!

Looking back, it was the onslaught on Honda in the mid sixties that pushed Sears out of the motorbike business. Most all of the mopeds and scooters (both foreign and domestic) disappeared from stores as well.

Newt,

Looks like thanks were due to your friend's Pop for you getting into this sport.

However, instead of an Allstate, one of my first bikes was from Sear's rival, Montgomery Wards. As you may remember, M-W sold the italian-made Benelli motorcycle brand, and the second bike I ever owned was one of their 360cc singles.(sold my Honda 50 to a friend to buy it). It was a bear to start(when that puppy kicked-back...OH WEEE!...no compression-release), but once rollin', was a pretty good bike on the road.

Cheers,
Dwight

I always wanted one of those....



Made by Puch from Austria.

Humm?

I wonder if you got the compression stroke incorrect on the kicker, if it'd throw you over the handlebars??

Just wondering.

JH

Newt, here's a link with history and some pictures of Allstate Motorcycles and Mopeds: http://www.cybermotorcycle.com/euro/brands/sears_allstate.htm

gotta love this place, ask and yee shall recieve hahahahahaha thanks for the link. but i found very few pics and none of the bike i remember. oh well??? maybe somewhere down the line hahahahahahaha sure would like to see a pic of that old thing. it almost looked like that 56 but not quite.

Ah yes, the Internet ain't it a wonderful thing.
Mike

I like this post from that site...

Thu Jul 20 2006
treefollow<at>yahoo.com
PUCH
1958 All State 250SGS
I would be interested in a sidecar and perhaps a solo seat and some replacement chrome pieces for a 1958 Puch Sears All State 250SGS

I bet Dennis Kirk and JC Whatnot have oodles of these...

Here's a picture of one of the bigger ones.
http://allstateguy.tripod.com/
Those were a rebadged Puch 2 stroker. The bigger ones had 2 cylinders sharing a common combustion chamber. When I was saving up for my first bike, I used to sneak over to the motorcycle page in the catalogue when nobody was looking.
There was also an Allstate car, a rebadged Henry J made by Kaiser Fraiser. Now, the closest you can get to that good stuff is a bloody lawn tractor. They used to have a Silvertone TV with a strange feature. It had a jack in the back to plug in one of those little RCA 45 RPM phonographs. You would turn the tone control all the way anti clockwise to toggle a switch over to phono mode (shut off the picture and TV sound) and all the way clockwise to toggle back to TV mode. I used to have a lot of people comming into the shop insisting that their picture tube had gone bad because of that switch.

Here is anothe link. Pretting interesting motor. Split Single. http://home.sprynet.com/~inniss/sears.htm



Soren

Last year there was a soldier on Fort Drum that was getting deployed and my brother-in law bought a 250 allstate from him in great condition for $275, He had owned one back in the late 60's early 70's. Its really cool, but i bet it will be hard to get parts for.

Some Allstate models were made by Cushman.