Whats up guys. I need some help identifying this board. I picked it up locally from a high school kid. The price was right and it looked like a solid longboard. Once I got it I did some research to figure out the brand. Only markings on it are Challenger Surfboards Eastern, no signature anywhere (there are dims). I know of the pop out Challenger boards these days, I’ve never seen a pop out like this before? What I read last night about Eastern Challenger boards talks about them from the 60s in NJ. This board is obvi not from the 60s. But seems well made, heavy glass, tail and wood blocks, etc. I read an old blog from a Surfshop last night that made a brief mention that there were a few new boards being made by Tinker and they would be sold in select shops. Is this one of those? Do I have something special here or nothing to get excited about? Thanks for any info you can give. Attached are some pics
I should add that the dimensions are written on the stringer, they are hard to make out under the resin. The dimensions you might see near the fin box were written in after the fact by some previous owner. They are not accurate, I need to get those off
Im no board expert. But i have the same exact board but diffrent color. Same tail block, same pinline and swirl (mines blue deck, yellow bottom with a green swirl, white pinline). Everything is identical except for ther fact that yours is red. 99.9% sure it’s a pop out.
Aww shucks. I’m impressed though, any pop out I’ve seen before (Canyon, Surfboards Australia, etc) has been a piece of crap. How’s it ride? Haven’t been able to take it out yet
I totally agree with you. I actually did some searching when i got mine thinking the same. It’s built very well.
Mines a 9’0. It’s a good all rounder LB. It’s fun in big stuff, fun in small stuff, i can grey on the nose but im a small guy at 145LBs. I ride SBs, this is my only LB. Iv had it out in everything from knee high to over head surf. Served me well everytime.
Maybe somebody can ID those side bite boxes? Who made or makes that box. The screw placement makes it similar to Lokbox, but not the shape of the box. ??
Not quite a “pop out” per se, but definitely mass-produced in Asia. It looks and feels like a decent board and it’ll enable you to ride waves…but every aspect in terms of materials and craftsmanship is just a little bit off. And the environmental standards and working conditions where it was made are non-existent and terrible, if that matters at all. What happens when a trademark expires is anyone can take it and do whatever they want with it, which is what happened with the dude over in Rockaway Beach. It’s not counterfeit or anything like that, but it has nothing to do with the renowned NJ label started by Carl Tinker.
I had a yellow one, 9’0", same nose block/tail block and yes, the price was right for mine too. Unfortunately they are mass produced and not anywhere close to the original from back in the day. Having said that, it was a fun board: a bit too thick in the nose for me, I slid out from time to time, but otherwise it floated and caught waves, so…
I agree, the sidebite boxes are some off brand. I always rode it as a singlefin. I want to say near the tail on mine it mentioned something about ‘australian foam’ but I could be wrong. My board got stolen a while back and I always vowed if I saw it on the beach I’d walk up and jam a screwdriver through that thing as many times as a could.
I felt bad when I first found out it was a cheap, mass produced board. But whatever, at least it isn’t a Bic. And, that’s a bonus. You don’t need to feel bad about beating it up with use.
The brand name is Challenger Eastern, and it’s a fake. The original brand has been out of business for about 50 years.
Someone mentioned Tom Sena, and that is the problem. These boards are phonies made in China and brought into the US by a scam artist.
While the factory workers may be capable of doing a nice looking glass job, it’s lipstick on a pig.
They are machine shaped, and finished by hand by people who have probabaly never even seen the ocean.
Sena brings in boards by the container load and uses cheap Chinese labor, so his cost is low and his profits are far more than what a legit label makes per board.
Again, the worst thing about these is the connection to Sena the scumbag.
I actually own one. they are shaped foam with 2 molds glued together at the center of rail .my is a beater but cool none then less.surfs like a dog and fin hums .heavy as heck… fun to take out every once and awhile. I’m sure they made them a few ways but thats before my time
They were closer to boat manufacturing. The construction was limited by mold size and stringers were just a veneer in most cases and strictly cosmetic. They probably are closer to Surf Tech manufactured boards in that they were popped out of molds. The Chinese boards are similar in construction to what is being shaped by your local shaper. The cosmetics are fine but everything else is substandard. They are junk. The shop owners love them because they make a much higher profit on them. They may make $120 selling you a Channel Island for $649 and they can make $300 selling you a longboard for $549.
Nope. The typical 60s popout was made as follows. Polyurethane foam mix was poured into a clamshell mold, much like the ones used for a standard blank. The big difference was that a sheet of fiberglass mat was placed in the two halves before the mix was poured and the mold clamped shut. Once the foam hardened the ‘blank’ would have a layer of mat impregnated into the shell. There would be a ‘halo’ of glass fibers remaining around the rail line that had to be ground/sanded off. Once the blank was prepped it would get a routed wood strip in the deck as a faux stringer. Some had real stringers installed, some even used a wood veneer tape. Then, standard process lamination with one layer of 10 oz cloth. Hotcoat, fin, sand, color, gloss coat. People think there’s often a seam on the rail, but that’s the tape line from the gloss coat that wasn’t sanded off. Some bothered to sand it. Many brand name boards of the period made a point in their ads that they hand sanded and polished their rails. Popouts usually skipped that step.
First off, I cannot fathom why anyone would refurbish a POS board like a Malibu, and am even more dumbfounded by the fact that somebody paid over $1k for it
I remember that one. Notice how there’s reddish brown areas between the ‘stringer’ and the red panels? That is because they used cheap resin with no UV inhibitors and they tanned really fast. I saw a guy who had two Malibus and he thought they had tinted resin. He refused to believe that the boards once had white, visible foam.
Over the years I have bought a couple of the old clam shell blanks and still have one. The first one in about 62 or 63. The guy I bought from said that all I needed to do was glass it over the mat and put a fin on it. Instead I ground the bead off that was around the rail edge and stripped the mat. Shaped the foam core into an 8’6… That was the first actual foam Blank I had ever shaped. In the 90’s I bought another up on the Central Coast. It was an 11 footer, intact with mat and rail edge. I still have it. I split it with a Skil Saw and didn’t do too good a job. Going to run it across a joiner and sandwich it on either side of a modern Poly core. That old foam had a nice ride. Closest thing to it these days is the so-called “Classic” density. The now defunct “Echotech” Foam was also pretty damned close.
