Museum Bikes 1986 to 2000

1993 Marin Team Titanium F.R.S.

1993 Marin Titanium F.R.S.

The Marin Team Titanium FRS, a dream mountain bike from the early ‘90’s.
25 pounds all together, including two water bottle cages and the handlebar ends that we left off of this display bike.

The Team F.R.S. Moniker stands for Front and Rear Suspension (in this case, Doug Bradbury suspension designs made by Answer-Manitou). This “Team” is the deluxe version with the straight gauge titanium tubing in the main frame. It came equipped with Shimano’s new XTR parts, a titanium handlebar and a super-light saddle topped off with a light sprinkling of purple anodized parts and accessories.

Manitou front end

Manitou rear end

1993 was still the early days of mountain bike suspension. Rock Shox made the first real mountain bike suspension fork and that RS-1 fork had only come out in ‘89. Entering the mountain bike market around the same time, Answer Products had only offered their Manitou fork for a couple of years at this point… The point that I’m trying to make is that the suspension on this bike was an early attempt and shouldn’t be judged to harshly.

But “Harsh” is a good description.

The Manitou fork has a four inch long rod with elastomers skewered like vegetable kabobs inside of each fork leg. These elastomers were selected to give just enough controlled spring action to give just under two inches of fork travel when you hit a bump in the trail.

Ti bars, Rapidfire shifters

XTR M900 Crankset

Durable and precise

The really novel thing about this bike is that after modifying the front fork just a bit, they were basically able to make the same Manitou fork work as the seat stays on this frame, with a simple pivot under the bottom bracket and a couple of bushings above the rear wheel dropouts to keep the whole system from binding too much.

Ringle Moby post

Rear linkage detail

XTR cantilever brakes

In 1993, the inch and a half of travel that you got out of this design felt plush, but at the same time it left you wanting more (which was good. Bike suspension has come a long way because of that). Unfortunately, elastomer suspension doesn’t age well. The front fork elastomers had turned to goo over the past thirty years, while the pieces in the rear unit had crumbled to dust. The guts of the whole system has now been replaced with Suntour XCM fork springs that we hacksawed to fit. It rides pretty well now.

Oh good gravy! Almost forgot about the parts! Shimano’s newly introduced XTR components were absolutely spectacular. The shifters function flawlessly even today, as long as the levers aren’t obstructed by grips that are too thick and they aren’t crowded too far into the center of the 22” wide bar by the bar-end extensions.

The color-coordinated purple quick-release skewers, bottle cages and stem? Still awesome.

Softride “Side Effects” bike

Poorly executed idea bike

This is more than just a mid ’90’s Softride mountain bike to me.

This is a platform for some of the half-baked ideas that have made it into the bike world. A few of these ideas were good ones that were simply poorly executed. Some of these ideas produced side effects that were detrimental to performance, safety, or enjoyment of the ride.

To start, take a look at the Softride beam. The idea: Suspend the rider instead of the bike. The execution: A fiberglass beam to flex up and down, ostensibly with a motion damping layer running the length of the beam. The side effects: Beam flex that could unpredictably change the saddle height (thereby interfering with pedaling efficiency) by as much as eight inches. A tendency to catapult the rider off of the bike and little to no help in keeping the wheels in contact with the trail.

Flex stem and Scott bars

Now let’s take a look at the beam’s evil twin, the flex stem. Once again, the idea was to insulate the rider from bumps in the trail without resorting to the more complicated and heavier suspension fork. The execution: a sprung parallelogram design that in the era of long 13 to 15cm mountain bike stems resulted in about 5cm of undamped travel and spring action. The side effect with these stems was that the handlebars could pull your center of gravity forward at times when you really needed to get further back in order to maintain control of the bike.

A better idea to introduce flex and comfort to the front end of your mountain bike would have been the Scott AT-4 handlebars. These things were very flexy and a little narrow (even for early ‘90’s mountain bikes) but are mainly included on this bike because they look funny.

Shimano dual control shift/brake levers

Next up is Shimano’s disastrous dual-control mountain bike levers. The idea with these things was that you could operate everything on your bike with one pair of levers. What they came up with: Brake levers that you would pull to stop (of course), shift to a higher gear by pushing down, and shift to a lower gear by “pushing” up on the levers with the backs of your fingers. Some people learned to love these levers. I had to reach out and pull up on the lever with my whole hand. Shimano knew this might be a problem so if you couldn’t get your fingers to work like they intended there was a prosthetic lever that could be bolted onto the underside of the brake lever to make it operate like Shimano’s regular trigger shifters.

Rapid-rise (reversed) rear shifting

Along with these levers came the “Rapid Rise” rear derailleur that reversed the action and thereby reversed the roles of spring tension and cable actuation within the rear derailleur. The most precise shifts happened when switching to a lower gear (when most of us want the help). Rapid Rise worked well and was actually a pretty good idea, and so the side effects that came with Shimano’s dual control levers would have to be the death of the associated Rapid Rise derailleurs along with the debilitating hand cramps.

The “Eggbeater” pedals have stood the test of time, and there are a lot of riders who swear by them. That doesn’t mean they were a good idea.

Crank Bros. Egg Beater pedals

The inspiration for these was to create a super light pedal that could be clipped into no matter which edge or side that you stepped on. The resultant design was very light and could in fact be engaged very easily, even in the most muddy or chaotic of trail conditions. The side effects? One, if the underside of the pedal were to contact anything on the trail, the pedal would release the cleat. Two, should you forget your cycling shoes at home, or wish to just take your bike for a four-block ride to the store, you were out of luck. Eggbeater pedals made a bike unrideable without the correct footwear and cleats.

Honorable mention goes to the early ‘90’s Onza pedals that used temperature sensitive elastomers to control the cleat engagement mechanism. They worked great at 70 degrees fahrenheit, you couldn’t keep your shoes hooked in at 90 degrees, and simply couldn’t use them if it was below 40.

The worst saddle

Lastly we have the cut-out saddle, taken to the extreme. The idea was simply “If a small amount of material removed in the crotch area of a bike saddle is good to relieve pressure from sensitive anatomy, then a lot of material removed would be better. The execution? Well, see for yourself. In case it’s not obvious, the side effect of sitting on this saddle is intense pain from the remaining plastic cutting into one’s inner thighs as well as temporary blindness. This one is still available, so I’m not going provide the manufacturer’s name. Just beware.

Other ideas that didn’t make it onto this bike (yet) include Spinergy Spox or Rev-X wheels, Biopace chainrings, the discontinued Pedro’s brand bearing grease that transformed into glue within about 18 months, steering dampers, hydraulic rim brakes, and Tioga “Farmer John” tires.

Jim Farley’s Pinarello

Jim Farley’s Pinarello

The ultimate road bike, restored on behalf of the ultimate car guy.

This is a bike that we created for a guy named Jim Farley. Jim is the CEO of the Ford motor company. Turns out that Ford’s CEO, who is clearly an avid car guy, happens to be an avid bike guy too. Jim asked us to recreate a favorite bike of his from the 1990’s.

The frame happens to be the Record model of the late ‘80’s. The paint was a little rough, so our friend Aaron Strom (who paints cars at Modern Collision on the island) gave it a fresh new blue that matches the Pinarello in Jim’s memory. In case you were wondering, Ford’s Velocity Blue is a little brighter and more metallic. This is Light Blue Metallic as seen on the 2015 Nissan Leaf. But enough about cars…

Chorus Ergopower levers

Chorus crankset

Campagnolo Chorus 8

We outfitted Jim’s Pinarello with a mid-‘90’s Campagnolo Chorus group, complete with Record Delta brake calipers and deep dish 16-spoke Vento wheels. The 8-speed ergopower levers downshift up to three gears at a time and drop all the way into the sprinting gears with a push of the right thumb lever.

Pinarello pantographed

Regal saddle, Chorus post

Like a lot of thirty year old bikes, this one has Look pedals (the pro model in black) and a Selle San Marco Regal saddle.

Jim wanted a pantographed stem, so we obliged with a 3TTT model with Pinarello etched on both sides.  The tires are 25c Goodyear Eagles, a choice that seems like something a Ford guy might approve of, right?

1986 Fat Chance mountain bike

1986 Fat Chance mountain bike

Think you can name a vintage mountain bike that would be more fun to ride than this one? Fat Chance.

Sorry, that was the obvious introduction for this 1986 mountain bike. I had to type it, I had no choice.

By the mid ‘80’s Chris Chance had been building custom bikes for almost a decade. It was the mountain bike boom that cemented his place in the bike world though, as Chris was one of the first East-coast bike guys to really embrace the dirt and make high-end and custom frames for off-road.

Fat City Cycles catalog 1987

Rigid cromoly steel front fork

Shimano Deore (deer head) parts

Thirty years ago this bike was equipped as you see it in the top photos. There were Shimano Deore thumbshifters, the big ratcheting ones that preceded Shimano’s indexed “click” shifters. It had The Shimano Deore “deer head” derailleurs, Sakae cranks, a Tange Levin headset, Suntour XC “beartrap” pedals, Magura motorcycle brake levers mated to Suntour brakes. Of course the set-up in 1986 was a roller-cam brake for the rear wheel and a cantilever for the front. There were foam grips, a Hite-Rite seat adjuster, a Suntour XC seatpost and a Specialized saddle that resembled an Avocet touring model.

Breeze & Angell Hite-Rite

The last Deore derailleur before it started to click…

This wonderful vintage steel mountain bike might have died a rusty death thanks to those old parts. As much as we may like old bikes, nobody seems to like “vintage” drivetrains or saddles. This old Fat Chance was given a new chance in 2021 with some fresh parts and a new name. We all know this was (or is) a mountain bike. Just play along… We’re now we’re going to call it a “gravel bike”. If we say it quietly maybe nobody will be the wiser.

This old gravel bike now has 30 speeds thanks to an updated Shimano Deore XT rear derailleur and new thumb shifters.

1986 Fat Chance Mountain Bike updated for 2021

A Hite-Rite and the Selle Italia Turbo “Bonnie” saddle

Modern Deore XT drivetrain

The vintage Saturae rims have been rebuilt with new Velo-Orange hubs, Panaracer Gravel King tires and fresh spokes. The new Velo-Orange Grand Cru crankset looks just right on the vintage bike but with modern chainrings the shifting is precise and smooth. The vintage Magura brake levers have always had an insane amount of stopping power but now with fresh Kool Stop pads in place the brakes will work quietly and reliably in the worst conditions.

Topping off this new old bike is a quilted remake of the classic Selle Italia Turbo saddle, an original Blackburn rear rack from 1986 and a Nitto front rack from 2021.

1992 Tomassini Diamante

Tomassini Diamante

Perhaps no other company epitomizes Italian bicycles like Tomassini. Tomassini is made in Italy with 100% production coming from the small shop in Grosseto. Here in 1957, Irio Tomassini began his commercial endeavor building exquisite steel road bikes known for exceptional quality, performance, and beautiful paint and finish. Today, Tomassini Bicycles still produces artisan quality steel road bikes but has expanded to high tech materials like carbon, titanium, aluminum, and state of the art stainless steel.

Clearly the folks at Tomassini have thought about their legacy more than I have, so the preceding paragraph is lifted directly from their current website.

Columbus multi-shape steel

Dura-Ace 7403

Shimano’s dual-pivot brake design

Like a lot of avid cyclists of the era, I was introduced to Tomassini in the 1980’s by way of their head-turning paint jobs featured in the “Italian Issue” of various cycling magazines. Unlike Italian compatriots Bianchi, DeRosa or Colnago, Tomassini wasn’t the direct supplier to any big-budget racing team. As a racing fan you rarely saw a Tommasini on television or in an action shot of racing coverage. But it wasn’t as if Tomassini frames weren’t there…

Flite saddle

Tomassini lugs

There were plenty of amateur and lower-level pro teams whose riders raced aboard a Tomassini. Our friend Gavin raced for one such team in the late ‘80’s, and he tells a story of having to race aboard a year-old model as the team director had sold the team’s new and beautiful frames to cover salaries and expenses.

Sometimes Tomassinis were covered in paint that hid the true origin of the bike, with a loyal racer bringing their trusted builder along with them through the pro ranks.

This particular Tomassini is from the early 1990’s. The Dura-Ace 7403 component group, Mavic clincher rims and Selle Italia Flite saddle pegs this bike as an enthusiast’s amateur racing rig. The Columbus Multi-Shape tubing is obscured somewhat by the fanciful paint job but the ride specific customization that the various tube shapes and wall thicknesses produced made for excellent ride performance.

This bike is for sale. If you’re tall enough (it’s a 60cm frame) and have $1600, it’s all yours.

1988 Colnago Superissimo

Colnago Superissimo

This Colnago, the Superissimo, was a mid-‘80’s update to the standard-setting Super from the 1970’s.
The Superissimo was made out of Columbus SLX cromoly steel tubing and was meant to ride with less flex than the Super’s SL frame by virtue of the five reinforcing steel strips that rifle up and down the inside of the main frame tubes. Outfitted with one of the last curved-blade steel forks that Colnago made (before they adopted straight-bladed models across the line) and the airbrushed grid paint job, this bike is almost as much fun to look at as it is to ride.

The fun elements have to include the Campagnolo C Record crankset, a polished aerodynamic beauty that incorporated it’s own removal tool into the fixing bolt. You have the teardrop-shaped seatpost that a Campagnolo sales manual actually suggested would direct the air flowing around it to cool the rider’s legs.

C Record Delta brakes

The C Record crankset with 7mm extractor bolt

Aero post, Cinelli Volare saddle

There’s a Cinelli Volare saddle on here that looks fairly demonic but is actually really comfortable… And of course the Campy C Record Delta brakes. These beauties have been ridiculed for their lack of stopping power (unfairly ridiculed, since their weakness is only evident in hindsight compared to more modern dual-pivot rim brakes and current hydraulic discs) but they were adored for their gem-like sparkle and sleek design.

Other fun things to note: The Mavic GEL 280 tubular rims on here weigh only 280 grams each! That’s lighter than nearly every carbon fiber bicycle rim ever made, and kinda makes up for the Delta brake calipers and the chromed fork, neither feature being very light. The Campagnolo shifters on the downtube are indexed (they “click”) and the shifting is actually really precise.

Front end detail

Made in Italy

Campy Synchro “click” shifting

This Colnago is just like the one that I had as a teenager (although mine was painted purple & white). In comparison to other racing bikes I’ve been able to ride over the past thirty years the Superissimo was, by far, the most awesome bike out of the bunch.

“Most Awesome” is a pretty subjective description, so I’ll try to defend my evaluation a bit:

Aerodynamics and weight play their roles in making a quick racing bike but so do comfort, stiffness and handling. Modern bikes are likely to cut a cleaner hole through the air, and modern bikes from a similar strata are likely to be three or four pounds lighter than this one, but this (heavy and un-aero) bike behaves in such a manner that you love to hammer on the pedals, dive into every turn and just keep riding mile after mile because you’re so comfortable on it.
Lastly, with this paint job and general presentation, everyone who admires it just assumes that the rider who owns it must be fast… So maybe you are.

1986 Haro Master Freestyle

1986 Haro Master Freestyler

Oh man, did I want one of these when I was a teenager.

The 1986 Haro Master freestyle in team Haro green.  The pinnacle of all things awesome.

So in 1986, BMX had fragmented a bit with racing taking place at dirt tracks, and freestyle going on in parking lots.  If you were fast, you raced.  If you weren’t fast (or simply couldn’t be pryed off of your bike between motos), you tried freestyle.  Freestyle meant jumps, quarter-pipe ramps, bar spins and any goofy trick you could dream up.

Flip-up fork stands

Places to stand all over the bike

Anyway, that summer the Haro Freestyle team came to the Erik’s Bike Shop parking lot in my hometown of Richfield, Minnesota.  They had all of the stars: Ron Wilkerson, Eddie Fiola, Dennis McCoy, and I think Mat Hoffman.  After setting up their quarter-pipe and cranking up the boom box, those guys proceeded to blow our minds with rad freestyle moves and ramp tricks.  This was early extreme sports stuff, and it looked like sheer magic.

Pins or rivets in the seat protected it when upside-down

The original and much copied Shimano DX pedal

Tuff II mag wheels

This is the bike that the Haro team used themselves, the Master Freestyler.  Really the best bike in the whole ’80′s freestyle scene.  The frame featured all kinds of extra spots to plant your Vans while attempting flat-land tricks.  There were fold-up stands on the front fork, twin top tubes, and stands (not axle pegs) at the rear dropout.

Frame stands were also a good place for a friend to buck a ride

Haro advertisement

The bike came freestyle-ready with mag wheels and Haro’s Group 1 parts, but you had to add a rotor (a cable de-tangler) up front so you could do bar spins without the brake cables winding up.  Other mods you could do included putting rivets or bolts in the saddle (to keep the plastic from getting scraped when the bike was upside down), and mounting the rear brake under the seat stays so you could step on the stays while attempting certain tricks.

This bike originally belonged to a local guy, ”Rad” Ranney Montgomery.  The beautiful restoration work here was done by our friend (and quite a good freestyler back in the ’80′s) “Jammin’” Jason Elhardt.

1999 Colnago Oval Master Titanium

1999 Colnago Oval Master Titanium

Despite the toy-store colors in the paint scheme this was once considered the most bad-ass racing bike in the pro peloton.

Serious racing bikes don’t have to be painted black.

This is a 1999 Colnago Oval Master titanium racing bike in the Mapei Team colors. Mapei is an Italian company that produces paint, adhesives, grout, and sealants for commercial and residential construction. The company has used professional cycling sponsorship for their advertising (sometimes joining with the Quickstep flooring company) for decades.

In case it isn’t obvious to you, the little blocks in the paint job represent bricks or floor tiles, and the fish-scale pattern is supposed to be tile adhesive as it would be spread on a floor.

So paint job aside, the frame is awesome. It’s made of 6/4 alloyed titanium, which is really the best (lightest, stiffest) but most difficult blend of titanium to work. The downtube starts out as a sheet of metal that gets folded into an oval shape and then welded at the seam. The top tube is drawn, squished or folded (we’re not really sure how it was made) into a diamond shape.

Star carbon fork

Mapei tiles and grout

Mapei team

Now, if you’re used to thinking of “fast” bikes as ones that are molded into smooth, aerodynamic shapes out of carbon fiber, you’ll be excused for thinking that this bike would put you at a disadvantage on a fast club ride. Sure. This bike is twenty years old. It’s made out of 6/4 grade titanium (which is sooo 1990’s), not carbon, and it is equipped with second-tier components and older design elements that would suggest a rider aboard this bike would be immediately distanced by his buddies. Really though, there’s no chance. This bike is fast.

It handles perfectly (like most Colnagos), it’s plenty stiff (which helps on climbs and in sprints), and it’s pretty light (our big 58cm bike is only 19 pounds).

6/4 titanium

Dura-Ace post, Flite saddle

Ultegra 6500 derailleur

The parts are a mix of late ’90′s awesome. Dura-Ace 7700 shifters, seatpost, bottom bracket and chain. Ultegra 6500 derailleurs, hubs and brakes. There’s an Easton EC90 carbon fiber handlebar (kind of angular-looking like the frame) and a Selle Italia Flite saddle. The saddle is one of the new ones with the cut-out in the middle, a trend that started in the late ’90′s and early 2000′s. Unlike the modern looking saddle the wheels look really traditional with 32 spokes hand laced into Mavic rims with tied and soldered spoke intersections.

Deda stem, Easton carbon bar

Oval Master

Out for a spin on this Italian dream machine, you’ll immediately feel faster than you actually are. Visions of old bike races and racers may play on your mind. You’ll likely imagine yourself as Johann Museeuw, gapping your rivals in the closing kilometers of the Tour of Flanders. If not the Lion of Flanders maybe you’ll see yourself as Andrea Tafi crushing the cobblestones of Paris-Roubaix or Michele Bartoli winning La Fleche Wallonne.

1991 Bridgestone MB-0

1991 Bridgestone MB-Zip

Dia-Compe brakes, Suntour shifting, Ritchey bars

This Bridgestone MB zip was one of the best mountain bikes available in 1991.

Grant Peterson of Rivendell Bicycles fame designed most of the Bridgestone line, and he did a fabulous job here.

At a time when mountain bikes were heavy, he made them light.  While everyone else was using neon green and purple splattered paint, Grant picked “Tusk” as the color for the MB-0.  While Shimano made everyone use oval chainrings and early rapidfire shifters, the Bridgestone was spec’d with a Mavic crankset and simple thumb shifters.

MB-0 and cycling icon Gene-O, a fast combination

Bridgestone catalogue ad copy

The Bridgestone catalogue is museum-worthy itself

Bridgestone catalogues of the era were also crowd favorites.  They featured cycling peronalities Gene-O along with Pineapple Bob and Karen teaching Bridgestone riders everything from proper descending techniques to sewing up a patched tubular tire to lubing a chain with melted beeswax.

Rigid fork and a loooong handlebar stem

Mavic crankset and hubs

Flags of contributing countries (and California)

You can still see old Bridgestones like this one being ridden today. Most likely they’ll have smooth tires and a cargo rack, doing commuter duty in the rain, but they’re still rolling. The MB Zip is one of the bikes that made Bridgestone bikes such a cult favorite even today.

1999 Colnago Oval Master Ti (the other one)

1999 Colnago Oval Master Titanium

We think the Colnago Oval Master is so nice, we’re going to write about it twice.

Yep, this is the same Colnago as the Mapai team version presented above. The shaped titanium tubeset is a little stealthier with the white and blue paint but the overall effect is still obviously fast and mean.

The 6/4 alloyed titanium at the heart of this bike is the same as the Mapai bike, but the parts are all different. Different better? Different different. First off, the fork is the Colnago Precisa steel model instead of the carbon version. It’s a little heavier but the bike handles like a dream because of it.

Deda Alanera bar

Precisa steel fork

Back end details

The shifters, brakes and derailleurs are Campagnolo Record titanium models from the late ‘90’s, a time when nine speeds for the rear derailleur seemed like a lot.

The radical looking crankset was machined by Magic Motorcycle in Langley Washington. The blue arms are hollow. The small 39 tooth chainring is machined out of the same piece of aluminum as the 53 tooth big ring. There are only three skinny tines holding the rings on and titanium bolts hold everything together. The whole package is light, stiff, and the anodized blue arms look just right next to the blue accents on the Colnago.

Cockpit details

Magic Motorcycle crankset

Ti American Classic post

The cockpit parts include a titanium American Classic seatpost and a Selle Italia Flite saddle (this one a version with reflective patches on the back and sides). Up front is the Deda Alanera one-piece handlebar and stem, one of the first carbon road bike bar/stem combos (after the Cinelli Ram bar).

The whole package rolls around on top of Mavic Cosmic Carbon wheels. At the time Cosmics were a bit heavier than all-around aero wheels like those from ADA or Lew wheels, but being from Mavic they were trusted by weekend warriors and sponsored pro teams alike.

A big thanks to Scott Mann for donating his Colnago to our museum and to Chris Blazina for hanging onto the Magic Motorcycle cranks for all of these years.

Classic Eddy Merckx

1989 Eddy Merckx Corsa

Having a classic ride is awesome.
Classic styling, a nostalgic vibe, maybe the chance to have something that you always wanted but didn’t have the money to buy the first time around.
Check out this vintage Eddy Merckx. A Columbus steel Corsa frameset painted in the iconic Faema team colors. It’s from the late ‘80’s, a time when aerodynamic and modern (looking) parts were fitted to bicycle frames that seemed identical to those made in the 1930’s.

This Merckx is outfitted with the Campagnolo’s 2nd tier Croce d ‘Aune group.  Named after a mountain pass in the Italian Dolomite mountains where Tullio Campagnolo was inspired to invent the bicycle wheel quick release.  It’s a beautiful component Gruppo, and you can’t have it on your bike unless you can pronounce it (say crow-che down).

Croce d’Aune Delta brakes

Croce d’Aune rear derailleur

In 1988 every bike racer out there (except our friend Gavin) loved Campagnolo, or at least loved the way Campagnolo bike parts looked.  The “C” Record component group was the top of the line, and the most beautiful and prestigious, but the Croce d’Aune group had some amazing design elements.  I loved the Croce rear derailleur and the brake calipers.

The rear derailleur had a different cable attachment than anything else Campagnolo has ever made.  The housing stopped on the top of the derailleur and slid across a grooved plate (much like today’s Sram derailleurs).  There was a cool looking steel rod on the bottom of the rear derailleur, and to this day we’re not really sure how it helps the derailleur move but it sure looks great.

Cinelli Pinochio stem

Croce d’Aune crankset

San Marco Regal saddle

The brake calipers from this component group are amazing.  Just like the Record level “Delta“ brakes these are more style than substance (they don’t stop very well), but they look terrific on any bike.  This version has return springs outside of the triangular body instead of having the mechanism stuffed inside.  The spring detail looks similar to us to the little rod on the rear derailleur.

Greg LeMond’s 1991 Carbonframes LeMonster

The CarbonFrames “LeMonster”

This bike is a bit rare, to say the least.

This is a Carbonframes Onyx mountain bike from 1991.  As far as we know, Craig Calfee built about a half dozen Onyx frames, and all of those were slightly different from this one.   The six “standard” Onyx models that were built didn’t mix titanium and carbon tubing, they were all carbon fiber (this one has titanium seatstays).  Other Onyx frames also had the rear brakes mounted on the seat stays, a location that made an easier cable run for cantilever brakes of the era.

So this bike is unique.  It was also built with only one rider in mind for exactly one race.

The other LeMonster

Greg at Chequamegon 1990

In 1990, Tour de France champion Greg LeMond entered and won the main event at the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival in Wisconsin.  The Chequamegon festival was (and still is) one of the biggest off-road gatherings in the country, drawing over 2500 riders into the woods each year.  During the height of LeMond’s racing career, the Wisconsin race was the only off-road event that he entered.

When September 1991 rolled around it would be necessary to defend the title. Greg had selected Carbonframes for his “Z” team’s road equipment, so a call was made. A mountain bike had to be procured to contest the big Midwest event.  Carbonframes (now known as Calfee), was happy to oblige.  Two bike frames were made for Greg to choose between.

Rock Shox Mag 21 SL Ti

Scott handlebars

Mavic post, San Marco Regal

One frame was a traditional diamond-style frame, designed for use with a rigid front fork and Greg’s preferred Mavic off-road components.  This frame was option “b”. It was built with elevated chainstays and suspension “correction”. If the head tube looks a little droopy to you, it should. Greg got to ride on the latest and greatest Rock Shox of the day, and the head tube angle was changed to keep the handling predictable with a suspension fork installed.

Frame detail

Greg “LeMonster”

Time road pedals!

The parts on the LeMonster bikes are very Greg, and very 1991. The Scott handlebars were a LeMond style signature for sure. This bike has a super long top tube and a Cinelli Grammo stem that set those bars out at an impossible reach for anyone other than Greg. Like a lot of road-bike racers in the ‘90’s, Greg was nervous about trusting new off-road clipless pedals so instead relied upon toe clips or his road set-up (in this case Carnac shoes and Time Titan Magnesium pedals).
An early Magura HS22 hydraulic rim brake was the obvious choice to stop the bike since nothing else would actually work in the tight space behind the seat tube. The saddle here is Greg’s preferred San Marco Regal, in this case the weird version with the square cast aluminum seat rails.

Really long cockpit

Early Magura HS22

Greg’s preferred Regal saddle

Like a lot of mountain bike designs at the time, this LeMonster was built with elevated chainstays as a way to combat problems with “chain suck”, an issue where the chain would wedge itself between the crankset and the chainstays.  Chain suck would never be a problem on our restored LeMonster, as we neglected to install a third chainring on the crankset. The frame is mostly made out of carbon fiber, but there are titanium stays on this bike and titanium bands around the tubing to support the waterbottle bosses.

Mavic shifters

Titanium seat stays

Mavic Dakar derailleur

From what we have figured out, of the two mountain bikes made for Greg that year, it’s likely that the “A” option got raced, and this one just hung on a hook somewhere.  Our friend Duan rescued the bike sometime in the late ‘90’s and now 30 years after it was first built up we have it all ready for Greg to rip through the Wisconsin woods again (although he might like a little more upright riding position these days).

1987 Gitane Vitus 979

Vitus 979 “Gitane”

It’s not a Gitane. While we’re at it, it’s also not a Cilo or a Peugeot or a Motobecane or Cycles France-Loire or anyone else. It’s a Vitus 979.

Vitus was a tubing supplier to a lot of different brands and offered this complete frameset as an option too. Somebody like Gitane, a bike maker with a dozen different steel models would label a Vitus frame as their own (usually omitting the giant Vitus decal on the top tube) and voila! Aluminum bike.

Vitus 979 framesets were made of small diameter 5086 aluminum tubing that was slip-fit onto aluminum sockets and then glued into place using a heat-activated type of epoxy. Bikes like this one were lighter, springier, and in a lot of instances, more comfortable than what steel bike brands had to offer

Vitus front end

Synchro shift levers

6 speeds

This bike and it’s parts were at the forefront of the mid ‘80’s road bike design revolution. We already mentioned the aluminum frame with its glued joints replacing the traditional lugged steel frameset. As for the parts…

The Look ski-binding style pedals had only recently gained a “foothold” among bike racers, replacing old-style toe clips and straps.

C Record Cranks

Mavic GP-4 tubulars

Indexed or “click” shifters, already popularized in ‘87 by Shimano and Suntour, get the Italian interpretation on this bike courtesy of Campagnolo. I believe we have Chorus Synchro II shifters here, the second version without the little auxiliary lever the first iteration had which allowed the rider to revert to friction shifting on the fly in case the indexing didn’t work. Campy did pretty well with the shifting on this bike considering that they didn’t produce entire drivetrains like their Japanese counterparts. Campagnolo had to design their indexed shifting without knowing whose chain would be used or what kind of spacing to expect the third-party freewheel to have. By about 1990 Campagnolo brought production of these parts in house.

Chorus derailleurs

Huracan Crono saddle

Oh hey, how about the saddle on this bike? It’s not a traditional leather model by Selle Italia or Selle San Marco, which is notable given how traditional road bikes had been for so many decades. This is a Lycra-covered gel saddle mounted on a real racing bike, a Huracan Crono model that resembles the Selle Italia Turbo Bio model that was fairly popular in ‘87.

Complimenting the stripped saddle on this bike we have Benotto plastic handlebar tape.  Popular in the 1980’s for some unknown reason, Benotto tape offered absolutely no padding and hardly any more grip than a raw aluminum handlebar.  So if you wanted shock absorption you were out of luck but at least you could pick an option from among about 30 colors.

Davidson Impulse

Davidson Impulse

I think Bill Davidson is going on 45 years of frame building here in Seattle at this point. Forty-five years of solid craftsmanship and terrific design without any of his bikes seeming too “traditional”.

Sure, there are a lot of steel Davidson bikes still out on the road, but that’s just the start. I worked for Bill and his partner Bob Freeman at Elliot Bay Bicycles when I first moved to the area back in 1999. It seemed like everything was titanium in those years but I also assembled a lot of custom bikes that were steel like this Impulse (some lugged, some tig welded and a lot of them incorporating custom elements like custom painted racks & fenders or integrated S & S travel couplers) and even a few with carbon fiber tubing.

Modolo bars, Shimano Dura-Ace stem

Front End

Tange Prestige steel underneath the paint splatter

This particular bike was probably made in 1993. Made in Seattle, at the shop on Western avenue just a few blocks north of the Pike Street Market. With a splattered paint job straight out of a Miami Vice episode, this Impulse model is a great representation of Bill’s work in the 1990’s. The frame contains dozens of thoughtful design elements. I like the way Tange Prestige steel tubing makes a bike ride, and that’s the tubing used to build the frame. It has Campagnolo horizontal dropouts so the rear wheel can be moved to change the wheelbase or correct alignment issues. There’s a chain hook on the seatstay and a pump peg on the steerer tube. The rear brake cable runs inside the top tube, and there are diamond-shaped reinforcements around the bottle cage mounts. Oh, and the Silca pump and the Blackburn bottle cages were painted to match the frame! It’s beautiful work and there are lots of thoughtful touches.

Mavic Helium wheels

Dura-Ace 7400

Dura-Ace seat post

The components are mostly from the Dura-Ace 7403 group. The original owner upgraded it with the lighter Dura-Ace 7700 brake calipers. It also features the slightly older Dura-Ace aero seatpost and we added the timeless Dura-Ace handlebar stem with the single hidden entry point for tightening the quill and the bar clamp. The red wheels are the iconic 1990’s Mavic Helium clinchers with Michelin Pro tires.

Used 54cm Impulse

Want one for yourself?  We have a blue 54cm Impulse for sale at the moment.  It’s equipped with fairly modern Shimano 105 parts including a compact crank and wide-range rear derailleur with a 10 speed 11-32 cassette. It comes with Ultegra wheels, a titanium seatpost, 28mm Continental Gatorskin tires, and Specialized saddle. Only $1399.

2000 Litespeed Ultimate

2000 Litespeed Ultimate

Wow.  A Litespeed Ultimate.  Was there a cooler bike available in the late ‘90’s?

It’s difficult to reflect upon the Lance Armstrong era in cycling without coming across some jarring and dated racing bikes.  There aren’t many that you’d call “timeless”, that’s for sure.  This Litespeed however seems pretty awesome even with twenty years in the rear view mirror.

The Ultimate was a titanium bike that tipped the scales nearly as lightweight as a carbon fiber bike. The Ultimate was racy and plenty stiff for sprinting or climbing with its big bladed downtube. Unpainted with a raw titanium finish it looked like something made for the military while polished or painted versions sparkled like jewels.

Classy coat of arms style badge

Dedaccai handlebars and stem

Bladed 6/4 titanium downtube

The timeless qualities of this bike are more about design omissions than the features that are included. For example: nobody decided to glue carbon fiber seat stays or chain stays into an otherwise all-titanium frame; a common practice in this era intended to make aluminum bikes seem more comfortable, steel bikes to seem lighter weight and dull grey titanium bikes to seem more interesting.

Dura-Ace 7700

Fizik Pave saddle, American Classic ti post

Litespeed dropout detail

The graphics are muted as well. The frame lacks racing stripes or team replica decals, the Litespeed brand is only present in a handful of spots and not dozens of places.

While the styling lacks the telltale signs common to turn-of-the-century bikes, the components are all the most popular from those years. There is the ubiquitous Shimano 2 x 9 speed Dura-Ace 7700 component group. Speedplay lollipop pedals (actually this bike was traded in with Time pedals on it but I stole them for my own use). Dedaccai (Deda) bars and stem, an Italian handlebar brand that seemed to appear out of nowhere in the late ‘90’s and ended up on every pro bike for a decade afterward.

Wheel cut-out

Bottom bracket shell

What else? Speedplay pedals

Fizik saddles were new on the scene in the late ‘90’s and this bike was equipped with the excellent Pave model. The wheels? Well, they’re the traditionalists choice for 2000. Mavic Open Pro rims hand-laced to Dura-Ace hubs. Built after the Spinergy/Campagnolo Shamal/Mavic Helium fad of the mid ‘90’s and clearly bucking the Rolf paired spoke/Mavic Ksyrium trend that was raging when this Ultimate first rolled down the street.

Interested in this timeless titanium wonder bike? If you’re tall enough for the 60cm frame size and have $3000 burning a hole in your pocket, it’s all yours.

1991 American Road Bike

1991 A.B.M. Road bike

This American road bike is a great example of the new materials and ideas than took hold of the bicycle world in the 1990′s.

Don’t know how the ’90′s treated you, but Aluminum had a great time.  Aluminum tubing was fairly new on the bike scene, and it was an instant star for being light, cheap, and durable.  These attributes made it the real miracle metal of the decade (no matter what Titanium says).  American Manufacturing out of St. Cloud, Minnesota put the aluminum tubing to good use here, with sparkly mid-sized tubes (compared to skinny Vitus frames or fat Klein and Cannondale bicycles).

The few people who still remember American mountain bikes are probably surprised to know that they made these cool road bikes too.  ABM didn’t sell a lot of road models, and as far as we know, this bike didn’t even have a model name apart from “road bike”.

An aero position more extreme than the drops

STI levers brought the shifting to your fingertips

Some of the parts on this bike were fads that came and went.  Some of the ideas were pure genius, and took the bike world in new directions.

Shimano Total Integration (STI) moved the shift levers off of the frame and joined them with the brake levers.  A stroke of genius that made road cycling safer, more fun and certainly faster.

Scott’s LeMond Drop-In aero handlebars introduced the idea of aerodynamic body positioning for everyday riding and racing.  Unfortunately, the extreme position wasn’t very comfortable and offered questionable safety.

The Flite Saddle was a comfortable option under 300 grams

Dura-Ace 7400 derailleurs

Dual Pivot brake calipers

Selle Italia’s Flite saddle was an intant hit with its narrow nose and light titanium rails.  Really the first comfortable (believe it or not) bike seat to break the 300 gram barrier, and a catalyst for changing comfort and performance expectations in saddles.  Selle Italia still makes this model today, and there are dozens of similar bike seats on the market three decades after the Flite first appeared.

18 and 20mm wide tires made their way onto road bikes like this one in the ’90′s.  The goal of the skinny tire was to reduce rolling resistance, but the narrow width made for a harsh and sometimes twitchy bike that suffered a lot of flats.

Dura-Ace components raised expectations for future bicycle components

Dura-Ace 7400 crankset

Specialized brand (now sold by Hed) Tri-Spoke wheels

Specialized’s Tri-Spoke wheels earned their esteemed status in bicycle history.  They were one of the earliest bicycle wheels (besides discs) made of carbon fiber.  They were a commercial success, and were followed into the marketplace by countless carbon-fiber wheel manufacturers.  These aerodynamic wheels were fast. They had great numbers in wind tunnel tests (and still do today) and could turn a mediocre bike racer into a rocket. They were reasonably light (about the same as wire spoked wheels), and they handled better than disc wheels in severe crosswinds. Specialized sold the manufacturing rights for these wheels in the late ‘90’s to Hed Cycling and Hed continues to sell them even today.

1987 Kirk Precision road bike

1987 Kirk Precision Magnesium

Frank Kirk thought up this remarkable road bike while working as a designer at the Ford automobile plant in Dagenham, England. 

The story that we hear most often is that the cast bumpers on the Ford Sierra were the inspiration for these bikes.

Clearly the construction method is atypical. The material is different too. This I-beam style frame is made out of cast magnesium, a highly flammable material that required a dramatically different approach to frame design and construction than typical when using round steel or aluminum tubing. 

It took only 8 seconds to mold one frame

Mavic SSC crankset and Gipiemme pedals

Rare white Modolo brakes

Magnesium is one of the lightest metals by volume, and although its rigidity is quite a bit lower than steel it should be a terrific ingredient for bicycle manufacturers.  While magnesium can be flammable and prone to corrosion if not painted correctly, magnesium as a material is inexpensive and extraction is environmentally friendly.

TVM Team poster with Kirk bike, 1991

Miche post matches the frame perfectly

Mavic SSC rear derailleur

Kirk boasted that a cubic meter of seawater contained enough magnesium to make a bike frame (although a tremendous amount of electricity is used in the process).  Unfortunately, Kirk was plagued by manufacturing problems, and the Kirk precision disappeared by 1995.

In it’s era, the Kirk precision wasn’t just a gimmick, it was a real racing bike. Phil Anderson and other members of the TVM team rode Kirk Precisions in the pro peloton, and the bike made an appearance in the Tour de France in the late ‘80’s.

An urban legend goes that a Kirk Precision was involved in a crash in the English countryside.  The flinty nature of the pavement produced sparks, which ignited the magnesium frame…. Still haven’t found any reliable sources to back up this story…

1999 Tour de France commemorative Trek 5500 road bike

1999 Tour de France commemorative Trek 5500 road bike

This is a Trek 5500 racing bike from the year 2000. The gaudy paint job and 1999 – bike limited run commemorates Lance Armstrong’s victory at the ’99 Tour de France.
Oh, sorry. I meant to redact the name. That should read “L**** A********’s” 1999 Tour de France victory.
No matter how the history books record the results, Trek was pretty proud that the Tour was won aboard their creation, a fairly stock model 5500 OCLV carbon road bike.
Trek’s OCLV carbon framesets were about 5 years old by the year 2000, yet they were still at the cutting edge of technology. OCLV stood for Optimum Compaction, Low Void. The label was more than marketing hype. Trek used high grade carbon material and superbly engineered tooling to mold each lug and tube. This construction method, which took frame construction in small steps instead of trying to create an entire bike frame at once, reduced the amount of epoxy and fillers left over inside the completed frame. The carbon molds squeezed the tubes extremely tight, reducing the size and number of “voids”, and leaving them with “optimum compaction” of the material.

Trek 5500 front end

Number 455 of 1999

Lance Armstrong signature

The Dura-Ace 7700 components on this bike were in the middle of their life cycle at the time. The 7700 crank arms were the first hollow arms that Shimano managed to produce, and the Octalink bottom bracket began an era of constantly changing bottom bracket standards that continues today.

Dura-Ace 7700

DA 7700 drivetrain

Paired spokes were all the rage

The 9-speed rear derailleur and shifters from this component group set the standard for precise and reliable shifting, and it took the introduction of Di2 electronic shifting in 2012 to surpass the 7700 group as a benchmark.

In case of emergencies, fresh blood

Sharp eyes will notice that this is no Tour-winning replica. Lance’s bikes would have been outfitted with sponsor-correct Mavic wheels, Shimano seat post, Chris King headset, Dedacci handlebars and handlebar stem. Those U.S.P.S. Cycling Team parts are replaced with Trek’s house-brand Icon equipment and Rolf’s paired-spoke Vector Pro model wheels on this over-the-counter bike.
Speaking of over-the-counter vs. prescription equipment, check out the special team-issue rocket booster on the down tube…

1986 Gary Fisher Mt. Tam

1986 Fisher Mt. Tam

This was Fisher’s flagship mountain bike back in 1986.

Beautifully constructed by fillet-brazing Tange’s butted Prestige cromoly steel tubing together, the frame is outfitted with a carefully curated assortment of top-end parts, sourced from disparate corners of the bike world. The components were selected with performance and reliability in mind, and as those performance choices were combined with attachment points for racks and fenders, we’ll take it that the Mt. Tam was a beloved everyday bike for most of the riders who had one.

Bull Moose bars

Shimano Light Action

XC seatpost, Regal saddle

“Carefully curated” parts assortment? A typical parts package today will start with a house brand (like Fuji’s “Oval Concepts” parts or Cannondale’s “Coda” equipment) supplying the handlebar, saddle, seatpost, stem, pedals and likely the wheels. Next you’ll have Shimano or Sram selected to provide similarly labeled shifters/derailleurs/crankset/bottom bracket, cogs & chain along with compatible hydraulic brakes, levers & disc rotors. There may be an independent fork brand or tire model to spice things up, but often everything looks pretty similar.

The Mt. Tam came stock with upgraded derailleur PIECES. You had Suntour brake levers pulling a Shimano front brake and a Suntour rear roller-cam. The hubs were taken from Shimano’s new Dura-Ace road group and the headset and crank was from the 600EX (later called Ultegra) groups. German company Magura had nothing to do with the brakes or suspension in this case but the bike did come with Magura grips.

Fillet brazed Tange tubing

Campy QR and no Hite-Rite on this one

Suntour Roller-cam brake with Overland brake cover

The derailleurs? You had Suntour XC friction shifters spec’d with a Shimano Light Action rear derailleur and a Shimano Deore front. The Light Action model had a cable attachment arm that would swing with a pull from the shifter but not move the derailleur until you started pedaling. It was a neat design, and an understandable low-level “upgrade” from a Suntour XC or a Shimano Deore. The pulleys on the Light Action weren’t that great so Fisher took the time and effort to replace the upper rear derailleur pulley with one that was meant for Dura-Ace road-bike derailleurs.

The Dura-Ace road hubs were laced to Araya RM-20 rims, a great wheel set for an ‘86 mountain bike. Fisher installed their own Fattrax tires on the bike and integrated a custom sealed bottom bracket. Suntour XC pedals and seatpost rounded out the component roster.

Suntour XC pedals

Threaded headset, threadless stem

Fisher headset cap

What about the handlebars? Clear eyes will spot Fisher’s retro-modern bull moose design, with a threadless stem setup like we would use today attached to the top of the fork steerer tube after it had passed through the traditional threaded headset. This design is pretty modern and novel, but it might be more “retro” than it seems… There’s a 1933 Kopski special elsewhere in our museum that sports a similar design.

Standard accessories included a rear brake cover made by Overland bags and a Hite-Rite saddle height adjuster by Breeze & Angell. The saddle, a bright yellow Selle San Marco Regal looks just right but was the sole bit of customization on an already eclectic old mountain bike.

1991 Look KG96 with Mavic Zap

1991 Look KG96 Team Replica

The Look KG96 team replica.

State-of-the-art carbon fiber from 1991. That means carbon fiber tubes in almost the same dimensions as steel or aluminum tubes glued into aluminum lugs. These particular carbon tubes also had some sort of ceramic material added into the carbon weave or the aluminum joints that added… Something… To the ride quality or frame strength.

This bike is set up almost entirely with French equipment (a Shimano front shifter and an Italian seat kind of ruins the total effect), but it is a showcase of French technology that was definitely ahead of its time.

Almost all French parts

Mavic Zap electronic derailleur

This was my bike, and in the early ‘90’s I had it set up just like the bikes that the Toshiba team rode. It had the Dura-Ace 7400 group, a Selle San Marco Rolls saddle, white handlebar tape and Look pedals.

At some point the Gan and then Credit Agricole teams became my favorites, so the bike got changed to reflect their equipment. The Mavic Zap electronic shifting was notable for the its absolute flawless rear derailleur shift precision and stone-age front shifting quality. Sometime in the mid ‘90’s there came a compromise, pairing the Mavic Zap in back with a Shimano STI lever to handle the front changes.

Wonderfully sculpted Mavic crankset

A “hi-tech” frame with ceramic particles woven into the carbon

This bike dispells two modern bike myths.  The first myth that gets busted is that somehow carbon fiber is fragile, or that it doesn’t last.  This thirty year old bike has about 30,000 miles on it, was involved in three pretty horrendous crashes, and had the right chainstay gashed pretty deeply and early on in its life in a baggage-handling misshap.  Yet the bike is still ridden today.  The second myth is that Shimano came up with the first electronic shifting system for racing bikes.  Clearly not true, as this KG96 was outfitted with the Mavic Zap component group in 1994.

1988 Specialized Hardrock 24

1988 Specialized Hardrock

The 1981 Specialized Stumpjumper is generally credited as being the first mass-produced mountain bike. As a significantly less expensive bike than a custom Ritchey, the Stumpjumper made off-road riding easy and fun for everyone.

Almost everyone.

Kids could hit the trails on their BMX bikes but without multiple gears riding over hilly terrain was a struggle.

It took a few years before mountain bikes were available to fit anyone shorter than about 5’ tall. We don’t think any credible source has decided which bike deserves to be called the first mass-produced kids’ mountain bike, but we’ve worked on Ross and Diamondback bikes from the early ‘80’s that might get such a label.

Big levers

Sugino triple crankset

Suntour XCD 4050

So this Hardrock from ‘88 wasn’t the first but it was close. With 18 speeds and upright bars it rocked all the goods: Big motorcycle brake levers. Suntour XCD 4050 derailleur & thumbshifters. A short Sugino triple crankset. A cantilever and U-brake combo. 24” knobby tires.

This particular Hardrock was recently traded in by our friend Rodney. While we had assumed that it was ridden by one of Rodney’s kids, it is entirely possible that 40-something Rodney rode this one himself as a preteen or teen thirty years ago.

1989 Specialized RockCombo

1989 Specialized RockCombo

Despite certain design elements and an appearance that would suggest otherwise, this old Specialized RockCombo isn’t the grandfather of modern gravel bikes. The RockCombo didn’t evolve into the 2020 Specialized Diverge simply because the RockCombo never had any kids;  it was an evolutionary dead end.

It’s too bad that this model didn’t have staying power, it seemed like a good idea. Part mountain bike, part road touring. 26″ wheels for quick acceleration and better lateral stiffness than 700c wheels along with more plentiful tire options. The Suntour and Specialized branded parts were robust and worked pretty well. The RockCombo was more fun to ride than a typical touring bike, the steering not as sleepy and the tires not as slick. It had design elements that made off-road trails something to entertain rather than avoid. The dirt-drop handlebars and upright position made the RockCombo super comfortable to ride. In fact it was probably more comfortable to ride than any contemporary bike except maybe beach cruisers and dutch bikes designed for short trips with minimal efficiency.

RockCombo front end

Dirt drop bars

Suntour drivetrain

So what was the problem?  Maybe it had to do with consumer habits…

In 1989, mountain bikes were new and awesome. The American public was finally getting good coverage of the Tour de France on television so road racing looked fast and fantastic. Charity fundraiser bike rides took place every summer weekend. You had at least three coworkers at the office who did triathlons. By my count those facets of the sport required at least three different bikes, and Americans were gear junkies in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. Maybe nobody was looking for one bike to do it all?

Maybe Specialized didn’t invent the gravel bike in 1989 because original mountain bikes actually were gravel bikes? At the time, mountain bikes were relatively efficient on the asphalt and they handled gravel roads easily. Thirty years ago nobody was pedaling against plus-sized tires and an extra ten pounds of suspension, disc brakes and dropper seatposts.

In 1989 the moniker “All-Terrain Bicycle” was still being bandied about. In many ways that name was more accurately descriptive for the bikes people were buying than “Mountain Bike”. Off-road bikes had flat handlebars that were about 24” wide and the most common upgrade were handlebar-end extensions that gave a rider extra hand positions like with a modern gravel-bike drop bar. Vintage mountain bike gearing included three front chainrings, with a big ring that was really only useful for high-speed riding on the road.

Suntour GPX, not GRX

Specialized Hardpack tires

Avocet saddle

Yes, despite modern success with do-everything models this vintage ride from 1989 never went anywhere for Specialized. Thirty years ago, nobody was interested in a new bike that could do everything reasonably well. Mountain bikes were selected for neighborhood rides with the family because they were new and rugged looking like the S.U.V. in a suburban driveway. Carbon fiber racing bikes were purchased for daily commuting just like sports cars were for the same task. Look fun and feel fast.

Today we’re often looking for one item that will do the task of three. Why carry a camera, a map and your wallet to travel when you have your phone? Why have a road bike, something for cyclocross or commuting and a mountain bike all hanging in the garage? A gravel bike would handle it all…

Specialized had the right idea, but nobody wanted the combo. Yet.

Gary Fisher’s Gary Fisher

1988 Gary Fisher

This custom Gary Fisher Competition actually belongs to my friend George, but at one time it hit the trails (and likely the five blocks down to his local coffee shop) under the pedaling power of its builder and namesake, Gary Fisher.

Who is Gary Fisher you ask? Well, if you don’t already know your mountain bike history, Gary is one of mountain biking’s founding fathers. In the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s Gary Fisher along with Joe Breeze, Otis Guy, Tom Ritchey and Charlie Kelly developed the off-road rigs that today we call mountain bikes. In the late ‘80’s my friend George Bausman started working in bike shops, assembling and repairing a lot of the mountain bikes that Gary Fisher developed.

Fisher front end

Suntour XC Pro Microdrive

George acquired this fillet-brazed wonder bike while working for American Cyclery in the 1990’s. American Cyclery has always been at the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area cycling scene (see our posts about A.C.’s founder Oscar Junor and his family), and George’s tenure under Gene Maruszewski in the early ‘90’s was no exception. Anyway, the American Cyclery crew were invited to one of Fisher’s “garage” sales, and Gary’s old custom painted Competition frameset went home with George.

Interloc Racing Designs seatpost

WTB designed Suntour roller-cam brake

Underneath the red, white & blue paint is probably Tange Prestige steel tubing fillet brazed into the racing configuration that you see here. Adjustable ball-bearing bottom brackets were an annoyance to early mountain bikers, needing near constant cleaning and adjustment, so this Fisher’s integrated cartridge bottom bracket was a huge advance. The WTB-designed roller-cam brake (mounted under the chainstays) was also considered a huge step forward from traditional cantilever brakes.

Suntour’s XC Pro rear derailleur

Traditional thumbshifters and a blue Controltech handlebar

George, like myself and many of his other contemporaries, held an anti-Shimano bias in the early ‘90’s so Suntour’s XC Pro component group got the nod here. Why the anti-Shimano sentiment? There were lots of reasons for a bike person to shun Shimano back then but the top four reasons were probably the wonky Biopace oval chainrings, resentment over U-brake adjustment and maintenance injuries (blood gushing from chainring punctures of the hand), their thumb-busting under-bar shift levers and the forced bundling of their components into integrated groups (which was a new bike business strategy back then).
The Suntour XC Pro stuff on this bike was constructed beautifully and was made to last. It came with round chainrings, above-bar thumbshifters and a reduced size drivetrain (20/32/42 tooth chainrings, 11-24 tooth freewheel) which made for a lighter bike that had fewer chain-suck and tire clearance problems.

Fisher badge

Time Sierra pedals

If you are feeling nostalgic for the early ‘90’s mountain bike experience, Gary Fisher’s Gary Fisher could make things a lot better or a lot worse.

Consider what a spin through the woods is like while steering a 22-inch wide Controltech handlebar. Imagine getting rid of your dropper post and installing a rigid IRD (Interlock Racing Designs) seatpost like we have on George’s bike. Think about the finesse it takes to maintain traction with 26 x 1.95” Specialized Ground Control tires and a rigid fork. If all of those things sound awful, these old Time Sierra pedals will get you back to romanticizing old times on a mountain bike. The Sierras were Time’s first off-road pedal and besides working better than all the other early mountain bike pedals (toe clips & straps especially), these also sported a passive retention option on their flip side, a pocket in the shape of their cleat that kept your feet aligned but didn’t lock them in place, a cool design that justifies the nostalgia.

1989 Ritchey Ultra

Ritchey Ultra

Since Ritchey just decided to reuse the model name “Ultra” for their newest mountain bike, we decided to update this 1989 Ultra into a modern touring/gravel rig.

This version features a brand new (for 2019) 2 x 10 Deore XT drivetrain with thumbshifters and a Velo-Orange Drillium compact crankset, wavey aluminum fenders, stainless steel racks, a new Selle Italia “Bonnie” Turbo saddle, new Ritchey WCS foam grips, WTB All terrain tires and Deore XT platform/clipless pedals.

It also features 30 year old Tange prestige frame tubing that gives the bike an absolutely sublime ride quality. The bike is still rolling on original Araya RM-20 rims, aluminum Nitto Bullmoose handlebars, Control Stix bar-ends (remember those?), Deore XT 4-finger brake levers and cantilever brakes.

Ready for adventure

Velo Orange Drillium crankset

Ready for luggage

One of the big draws for selling a vintage bike in the Pacific Northwest is the idea that it came from someplace else (someplace that’s dry). This Ritchey spent most of its life in Santa Fe New Mexico.

1994 CarbonFrames Tetra-Pro

CarbonFrames (Calfee) Tetra-Pro

Quick Robin! To the Batbike!

Batman and Robin didn’t have road bikes in their arsenal (as far as I know), so if they wanted to leave the Batmobile in the garage there was really only one proper bicycle source for the dynamic duo. Craig Calfee at CarbonFrames would have been the guy to call.

Check out the details on this old Tetra-Pro. It’s perfect for the bat cave.

CarbonFrames construction techniques didn’t (and probably still don’t) involve just a handful of frame molds or a set of aluminum lugs connected by carbon fiber tubes of various lengths. Instead of being glued into cast aluminum joints the tubing was wrapped at the junctions with carbon fiber cloth, pressed into something that we imagine looks like a big waffle iron, and “baked” to perfection. Besides the ability to customize virtually every aspect of their frames for size, handling characteristics, stiffness and flexibility, their construction methods produced the neat webbings that reinforce each “lug” and lend the Tetra-Pro its cool bat-wing look.

Tetra-Pro front end

American Classic Ti post, Regal saddle

Bottom bracket shell “webbing”

Calfee and CarbonFrames jumped away from the front of the pack in the early ‘90’s. Greg LeMond and his “Z” team sought out Calfee for the 1991 season knowing that they could get stiffer, lighter and more customizable racing bikes from CarbonFrames than from any other manufacturer.

CarbonFrames/Calfee headbadge

Syncros stem, Avocet Altimeter

Made in California

Craig Calfee wasn’t the first American bike builder to make it into the Tour de France (Ben Serotta made “Murray” and “Huffy” labeled bikes for the 7-Eleven and La Vie Claire teams as early as 1986) but CarbonFrames was the first American bike company to reach Paris with their own name on the top tube.

Dura-Ace with SRP bolts

The components on this particular Calfee are no nonsense for 1994.  A complete Dura-Ace 7400 parts group including the new dual-pivot brake calipers.  Specialty Racing Products aluminum and titanium bolts save weight and add great anodized colors to their various spots on the bike.  There’s a Syncros handlebar stem and a titanium American Classic seatpost.  The wheels, built with Mavic Open 4 rims are so light you need an Avocet 50 altimeter cycling computer to make sure you don’t take flight…

If you compare the most prestigious racing bikes from the early ‘90’s against one another it’s pretty clear that Calfee’s creations were the best available. Great handling and cool finishes (our Tetra-Pro here glows like a purple marble when out in the sun) top off bikes that were lighter, stiffer and yet still more comfortable than ninety-nine percent of the bikes in the pro peloton.

Serotta titanium road bikes

1995 Serotta Ti

Over the course of thirty years Ben Serotta developed an enviable reputation.   Known as an American frame builder at the absolute top of the trade, his name was thrown around with the likes of bicycle master craftsmen Ernesto Colnago, Koichi Yamaguchi and Ugo De Rosa.

When big-league American racing teams needed bikes and their sponsors weren’t up to the task, Ben was the guy that they called. Greg LeMond and Andy Hampsten probably had a couple of Serottas during their years on the La Vie Clair team. Remember the 7-Eleven team and their “Huffy” brand bikes? Those were Serotta frames. Remember the Coors Light team? They rode Serotta frames.

Serotta badge, Dura-Ace 7403 brakes

Ti stem, Dura-Ace 7400 parts

Dura-Ace 8-speed rear derailleur

While Serotta made the first American bikes to be raced (somewhat secretly) at the Tour de France, most Serottas were sold to individual riders in the United States.  If you had a lot of cash and happened to be a bike guy, Ben was the guy you called.  In the ever-escalating equipment race among Sunday-morning bike club riders (especially during the Lance Armstrong era), a top-end Cannondale or Colnago could only be topped by going with the nuclear option: a titanium Serotta.

Serotta Classique Ti

Campagnolo racing triple

Campagnolo carbon seatpost

Despite the discreet graphics, bikes like these drew a large number of admirers.  Former Secretary of State John Kerry has a Serotta. Conan O’Brian rides a Serotta. Robin Williams had a handful of Serottas in his vast bike collection.

1989 Merlin Titanium

1989 Merlin Titanium

If the mythical wizard Merlin dabbled in alchemy he may have realized that turning lead into titanium was an easier way to end up with gold than doing a straight lead to gold conversion.

In the late ‘80’s, bike brands were trying all kinds of new materials to build the perfect frame. Racing bikes had been built out of steel tubing for decades, so coming up with a rust-proof alternative to steel that was lighter, stiffer, less expensive to build or just looked different was the holy grail in the new material quest.

In 1986 the Merlin bike company pulled titanium out of their magic hat.

Aluminum: Yesterday’s carbon fiber.

Titanium tubing

The original Italian deep dish

Merlin Metalworks was founded by Gary Helfrich, Gwyn Jones and Mike Augspurger in Cambridge Massachusetts. The folks at Merlin pioneered the use of titanium for mountain bike frames, they figured out how to make titanium frame tubing internally butted, and with design help from Tom Kellogg of Spectrum Cycles they came up with this road bike that you see here. The titanium tubing made for a springy ride (if not actually stiffer than a steel bike) and one that was lighter, rust-proof and markedly different looking.

Cheaper than steel? No. It was definitely not cheaper.

For close to ten years Merlin ruled the world of exotic high-end racing bikes. A Merlin mountain bike or road racing bike was considered indestructible. While carbon fiber durability was viewed with a skeptical eye and aluminum ride quality was often labeled as being too stiff (deservedly or not), the sublime ride of titanium was immediately embraced by those willing to pay the higher prices.

Modolo 8 XTenos bars

Modolo Professional quill stem

WTB Grease Guard bottom bracket. Kinda like BB30 only better.

This particular Merlin was originally outfitted with Campagnolo’s C Record component group, Modolo’s angular 8 X-Tenos handlebar and stem, 20mm wide tubular tires and Time Titan Magnesium pedals. Early ‘90’s updates include the brilliantly polished Campy Shamal wheels and the 8-speed Record ergo shifters and rear derailleur.

The round tubes, horizontal top tube and pump peg on this frame tie it to all of the steel frames that came before it. The integrated cartridge bearing bottom bracket, aluminum fork and bare titanium led to designs that are still common today.

C record crank, Time pedals

Flite saddle, C Record post

Campagnolo C Record Delta brakes

By the way, we gotta say that it makes us wince a little bit to overhear this bike being described in the shop as “retro” or simply “old”. Some things (like the Blackbird SR-71 spy plane or the iPhone) should never get the label “antique”. Maybe for a bike that was cutting edge technology in 1989 those adjectives are accurate. While we would prefer that people use the term “classic”, we’ll begrudgingly admit that Ronald Reagan was probably still in office when Merlin Metalworks got the original order and deposit to build this magical machine.

1986 Hutch Pro Racer

1986 Hutch Pro Racer

Who says that boys can’t ride pink bikes?

True, our friend Jay Elhardt built this bike for his wife to ride, but it isn’t necessarily a girls bike.

During BMX’s prime time, Hutch factory racer Mike Miranda and freestyler Woody Itson both rode pink machines.  Mike’s visage leapt off the covers of BMX Plus leading the field on his pink Hutch.

Jay restored this totally tubular time machine with some of the coolest components.  Tioga tires, Oakley grips, three-piece cranks, a laid back post and a Dia-Compe Nippon rear brake.

Mike Miranda and his pink Hutch Hollywood

White ACS Z-rims

The wheels roll around on nylon ACS Z-Rims.  Nylon rims, like the aluminum rims that they were replacing, were plenty strong.  Of course, like any “alternative” product used in bike construction, Z-rims had their skeptics and were the subject of a few myths.  The skeptics were sure that the plastic rims would break easily (ignoring their own dented rims) as compared to metal.

JT Racing plate

DK Stem

Laid-back post

Of the myths, my favorite was always told by a defensive Z-rim rider.  They would swear quite earnestly that their wheels could be trued by simply sticking them in the freezer.  Now, as a BMX rider who grew up in frosty Minnesota, Jay would be the first person to tell you that simply freezing these wheels will do nothing to straighten out a warped rim.  Likewise, after 30 years in existence, Z-rim skeptics can quit wondering about long-term durability.

Scott Bellamy’s 1989 DeRosa Professional

1989 DeRosa Professional

Which came first, the bike racers or the reputation?

When you’re looking at vintage steel racing bikes there seems to be a stratum for the top labels, particularly for the European brands. We have noticed (and probably helped propagate) the idea that Colnago, Merckx, DeRosa and maybe Bianchi’s Reparto Corsa division occupy the top tier for racing bikes. Other brands like Cinelli, Rossin, Masi or Tommassini may naturally slot in as “next best” while labels that have turned out some fantastic bikes over the years like Gitane, Pinarello, Peugeot or Legnano get labeled “third tier”. This stratum is not really fair, but it seems to exist. The question we want answered is whether the hierarchy would exist without the bike racers who rode these bikes. Maybe the reputation came first and the bike racers gravitated towards certain builders as a result?

DeRosa head tube badge

Benotto handlebar tape

Simplex retrofriction shifters

This is a late ‘80’s DeRosa Professional and it belongs to our friend Scott Bellamy. Scott probably doesn’t remember if his decision to buy this bike was informed by Ugo DeRosa supplying the Ariostea team. He may have been aware that the great Gianni Motta raced a DeRosa for a number of years. Perhaps Scott was a fan of Eddy Merckx or Francesco Moser and had to have a DeRosa just like his favorite racers. Maybe Scott’s dad was a bike racing fan and had told him stories about Geminiani’s exploits racing in the 1960’s.

Clean lines

C Record crankset

C Record derailleur

By the late ‘80’s, DeRosa had a mystique surrounding their bikes. The reputation for superb handling, magical climbing abilities and general racing efficiency were ascribed to the brand. This particular DeRosa, outfitted with Campagnolo’s beautiful C Record group would have been described as a magnificent racing bike to Scott before he even had the chance to test ride it himself.

Handbuilt wheels with Campy hubs

New saddle, Campagnolo C Record post

So, what’s the answer? Are the old bike racers the reason that DeRosa is an iconic brand or did Ugo DeRosa make spectacular racing bikes that attracted professional and amateur racers alike?

Scott’s bike here answers that question. Look at the saddle or the tires. They’re modern. The bike is over 30 years old.

Scott still rides this bike regularly. Equipped nearly identically to the way it was the day he bought it. Nobody would continue riding the same bike for thirty years simply because a famous racer pedaled one like it. A hobbyist who rides the same bike for thirty years (and maintains their bike like this) will only do it because they have a very special machine.

Colnago Carbitubo

1990 Colnago Carbitubo

Do you like this one?

It’s a little hard to see the details from the side, so be sure to click on the photos so that they enlarge.

We probably don’t have to argue the merits of this old Colnago, you can decide if you think it’s cool for yourself. Let’s just say that if you like it now, imagine what you would have thought if you were an aspiring bike racer in the late ‘80’s or early ‘90’s and laid eyes on it then.

Now, is it most awesome bike you’ve ever seen?

How about a little bit of background: In 1988, carbon fiber (we usually called it “Graphite” back then) was set aside for racers doing the mountain stages of the Tour de France. Bikes made out of carbon fiber were expensive (a Vitus Carbon 9 was twice the price of a Vitus aluminum model) and the new material was still a couple of years away from being marketed for mountain bikes, touring bikes, or any other general use.

Bottom bracket junction detail

Isn’t this awesome?

Colnago had been blowing our minds with the shaped-steel Master models (the Equilateral Master was particularly freakish) for a couple of years, their double-downtube Duall aluminum model seemed weird and exotic and the steel Arabesque was extremely ornate. Carbon fiber was utilized in a couple of concept bikes and limited-production superbikes, but when Colnago unveiled the Carbitubo at the bicycle trade shows it stole all of the attention from their other models.

Colnago Force carbon fork

Carbitubo back half

Right away the Carbitubo seemed special. When my friends and I first fawned over it at the 1988 Chicago bicycle trade show we knew it must be the greatest racing bike ever. It was high-tech, had an unusual design, it had built-in racing heritage, and the Ferrari car company helped design it somehow!

As it was explained to us, the two side-by-side downtubes resisted flexing horizontally but would still respond to bumps in the road with some vertical give. The redundant downtube would also protect the rider in the event of a (wildly hypothetical) failure of just one tube while out riding around. The chainstays, nearly square shaped by the bottom bracket, tapered and flowed into pencil-sized round tubes where they joined the aluminum dropouts.

Twin downtubes, twin carbon spokes

Retro and high-tech all at once?

The tie-in with Ferrari was probably more than just cross marketing. Colnago got help from Ferrari figuring out how to build with the new material, and Ferrari got an inexpensive (imagine how much material goes into car body panels versus a bike frame) and relatively low-risk platform for experimentation.

The Carbitubo models were available from 1989 through 1992. They came with Colnago’s straight-bladed steel Precisa fork and most of the time you would find them built up with the Shimano Dura-Ace 7400 group or Campagnolo C Record parts. The Ariostea and Buckler pro teams raced the Carbitubo to great success, sometimes even with these cutting-edge (literally) Spinergy Rev-X wheels!

Time Titan Pro magnesium pedals

Selle Italia Novus Ferrari saddle

Our museum bike here is based on a frame from 1990 but it has been built up with slightly more modern components. It has Dura-Ace 7700 (circa 1996-2002) parts, a Colnago carbon fork (from their C40 model), Time Titan Pro pedals and a Selle Italia “Ferrari Engineered” Novus model saddle. The build-out of this bike represents a greatest hits package from the 1990’s and it’s not just a museum piece that we’ll be hanging on our walls.

We’re going to enjoy some miles on this bike!

1986 Rossin SLX racing bike

1986 Rossin SLX

Let’s say you’re the editor of an English-language bike magazine.

Since some of you just wondered if there is still such a thing, let’s also say that the year is 1986.

As someone calling the shots at the magazine, you know that you have to have an “Italian Issue” every once in a while. An edition with nothing but beautiful eye candy for the gear junkie. One month devoted to all things Italian, guaranteed to be more colorful and interesting than the standard fare.

Your Italian Issue needs to have a factory tour at Campagnolo. You should have a look at Sidi shoes and some Italian saddles. There will be a visit with one of your favorite four: Bianchi, DeRosa, Cinelli or Colnago. If the magazine still has pages to fill you’ll hit up a couple of “smaller” brands for bikes to test or builders to interview. You probably have a list. How about Pogliaghi, Guerciotti or Tommasini? Daccordi, Olmo, Alan or Somec?

They’re all worthy of a feature, but Rossin has it all.

Rossin head badge

Diamond-grid airbrush paint

San Marco Concor

Rossin has a heritage story. Marco Rossin worked as chief builder for Colnago bicycles in the 1970’s before starting an independent brand. If you feature Rossin in this issue, you have some gritty race action photos to tie in to your article courtesy of Hennie Keiper and the Verandelux team. Rossin will probably buy advertising space in your magazine, so that’ll be nice as Rossin ads usually feature pretty models (we’re not talking the bikes here) that just add to the exotic Italian theme.

Super Record crank, Look pedals

Super Record rear derailleur

Rossin advertisement, late ‘80’s

Of course the real draw when you feature Rossin are the bikes. They’re spectacular.

All Rossin models (the actual bikes) are beautiful. There’s a time trial bike that looks like it’s made from melted wax. The Ghibli road model is made from specially shaped tubing that really stands out. There are little details all about the frames and forks that catch the eye. This SLX is a great example. It has a semi-sloping fork crown with the Rossin “R” cast into it on each side. The rear brake cable disappears into little diamond-shaped ports on the top tube. The bottom bracket shell looks aerodynamic, not blocky, and the shift cables make a short cut through the shell on their way to the derailleurs.

“Straight Block” 13-18 tooth freewheel

Rossin bottom bracket shell

San Marco Concor

Rossins typically got the full airbrush treatment. Grids, fades, paint panels in multiple colors. Elaborate but not necessarily gaudy. Like a lot of Italian bikes, for Rossin it was necessary that the decals called out the brand or model name in at least twenty different spots on the frame and fork.

Pantographed logos on the brakes, seatposts, handlebar stems and chainrings were typical. Our SLX example here looks almost plain with its Campagnolo Super Record Gruppo, the only radical equipment being the new-fangled Look pedals and the aerodynamic brake levers with their hidden cables.

One thing is certain: An Italian issue without a Rossin would be a dud.

1988 Schwinn Project KOM 10 mountain bike 

1988 Schwinn Project KOM 10

Take a look at this Schwinn mountain bike from 1988.

This is the “Project KOM 10” model, KOM meaning King of the Mountain. It was a pretty sweet mountain bike back in ‘88, and a good representation of what the big bike brands were offering at or near the top of their off-road lineups.

What could you expect for around $800? Schwinn, like most of their contemporaries, would offer a pretty nice butted-tubing steel frameset or a straight-gauge aluminum one (Schwinn went with the Tange Prestige steel in this case). You could expect to see Shimano’s Deore XT equipment like on our KOM here or component rival Suntour’s XC Comp or XC Pro parts. Araya RM-20 rims were a must in 1988, it was pretty likely that you’d have a roller-cam or a U-brake mounted down by the crankset, the handlebars were likely to be straight and about 22 inches wide, and the pedals almost certainly had toe clips bolted to them (this one did but we took them off).

Deore headset, Schwinn badge

Schwinn front end

KOM back end

All in all, Schwinn played the mountain bike game by the numbers here. The KOM is nearly an exact copy of the Panasonic MC 7500, and pretty similar to bikes that Bridgestone, Specialized, Diamondback, Miyata, Univega, Bianchi and Ross had to offer at the time.

The Project KOM moniker hinted that this was somehow a super light bike for climbing up rocky ascents, but without anything really radical in the parts department or with the frame design, it was best to take “King of the Mountain” to mean the top of their own mountain bike lineup.

Thumb shifters

Deore XT drivetrain,, U-brake

Deore XT

The thing that we like about these mountain bikes from the late ‘80’s is their (unintended) general usefulness. Sure, you could enter a mountain bike race or have an all-day adventure exploring the fire roads and hiking trails outside of the city limits. That was exactly what the magazine and catalog pictures showed their models doing.
You could also use one of these bikes for a work commute or a run to the video store. With homemade studded tires, this was your snow bike. Add some smooth rolling tires for the streets and you could have a nice “hybrid” or “trekking” bike.
Mountain bikes like this one worked well for multi-day loaded tours. As long as you could figure out how to get racks installed (since many top-end bikes like this one lacked rack eyelets) they worked great. Unlike a typical road bike from the era, fenders could be attached to help ward off the cold and wet.

Tires labeled for the bike

Tange Prestige tubing

Selle San Marco saddle

Today, bikes are designed with a very specific rider and intended use in mind. Walk into a bike shop and take your pick. Want to see a bike designed for long-distance touring and capacity to carry 70 pounds of gear? A bike designed for day trips on mixed surfaces with 30 pounds of luggage? A mountain bike for cross-country racing with the high school league? How about an Enduro mountain bike, designed with enough suspension and control for rugged downhill trails but efficient enough to pedal uphill?
These days, with such nuanced bike design it’s possible to get exactly what you want but also quite possible to pick incorrectly and wind up with something that really stinks for the types of adventures that you have dreamed up.

Back in 1988, there was hardly any of this nuance.

1996 Trek Y33

Trek Y-33

Why not?

That’s what our friend Chris Lyons thought when he saw this Trek Y-33 at Frank’s Fix-it shop in Aberdeen. Clearly a labor of love for all things awesome in the 1990’s, this bike has been upgraded to perfection.

Let’s start at the beginning. This is a Trek Y-33 built in 1996. It is arguably the coolest thing that Trek, a midwestern company with a reputation for generating some fairly dull bikes, has ever made. When Trek introduced the Y bike it created an immediate buzz. Every bike magazine at the newsstand featured a review. In bike shops around the country there was a lot of gawking and countless test rides.

Trek’s earlier suspension designs (the 9000 series) were terrible. They were heavy bikes that bobbed up and down as you pedaled and bikes that reacted fairly unpredictably to bumps in the trail. The Y bike was a step forward for Trek, and it addressed a lot of those issues. The Y-33 utilized Trek’s OCLV carbon fiber in a radical looking and light weight main frame that was coupled to an aluminum unified rear triangle. No pedal-induced bobbing, predictable behavior and a pretty light bike.

Stable Tec Dampenator

Unified rear triangle

SDG saddle, Ringle post

The components here represent great ingenuity and some really fun style.
The stock fork has been replaced by the long travel Rock Shox “Judy DH” downhill model. We’re not sure if the additional 15mm of fork travel was the goal or if it was the red fork legs…

The Spin thermoplastic wheels look just right with this Y bike, don’t they? Tough, reasonably light, and cool looking. The three requirements for most of the parts here.

The brakes are awesome. They’re Magura Race Line HS33 hydraulic rim brakes, and they’re the most powerful mountain bike brakes you can find. Don’t believe it? Consider this: with current hydraulic disc brakes stopping power generally increases with rotor size (180mm rotor brakes stop better than those using 160mm) this bike has 570mm diameter brake rotors! Plus they’re neon yellow.

Magura hydraulic brakes

Spin Thermoplastic wheels

Paul Components derailleurs

What else? Let’s see… There’s a SDG saddle with a Kevlar cover (no rips in your saddle if you crash your bike). Red Control Tech handlebars to match the Ringle seat post and handlebar stem. White Industries made the polished aluminum crankset. Paul Components of Chico, California made the derailleurs and helped create the small window of time when it was possible to assemble a bike that was 98% American made.

Oh, the Dampenator! That’s a rare thing. The StableTec Dampenator (that donut around the headset) was an attempt to calm down the steering on mountain bikes in the ‘90’s. Currently (and in the early days of mountain biking) frames were made with slack head tube angles to help you steer and stay upright at high speeds or while riding on rough trails. In the ‘90’s you were on your own, wrestling with twitchy bike frames that had steep front ends, narrow handlebars and a forward riding position. Steering dampers would have really helped (if you could get over the added weight and the funny appearance).

…Flying “Y” guitar?

Carbon fiber bike frame or…

Oh, so what about all of those bike magazine reviews and rider testimonials? Verdicts on the Y-33 varied wildly. If you had fairly smooth, open terrain and/or you stayed in the saddle most of the ride, you were a fan. If you had tricky trails or stood on the pedals a lot, you were left wanting more…

1991 Schwinn Paramount

1991 Schwinn Paramount

A family name can be a bit of a burden.

Junior.

The third.

With a family name there’s always a legacy involved. Maybe grandpa Jack was a great guy and everyone loved him but Jack junior was always feuding with his neighbors and was known to have a bit of a temper. When Jack the third came around everybody started calling him Jay.

Can you imagine being a 1991 Schwinn Paramount? Dad was a orange bike from ‘74 built with a Campagnolo Record group. Riders were always saying nice things about him.

The original brake/shift lever

Paramount front end

A Ross Schafer-era Salsa stem

Granddad was a blue Schwinn Paramount hand built by Oscar Wastyn. That bike, built in the ’40′s, had such a great reputation that every Paramount that rolled afterwards was judged against it.

Our ’91 Paramount handles this legacy pretty well. Road bikes like this one were built by the Paramount Design Group (now known as Waterford) in Waterford, Wisconsin. Constructed out of slightly oversized custom steel tubing and painted one of eleven possible colors (can you believe somebody actually selected the blaze orange option?), this bike rides great.

Dura-Ace 7400

P.D.G. Paramount Design Group

The tubing is silver brazed into custom lugs, and descriptions like “clean” and “elegant” were probably bandied about when this frame was new. The oversized (for 1991) steel tubing produced a lighter, snappier and probably stiffer racing frame than this Paramount’s predecessors. Interesting (to us at least) was that this tubing required the use of a 27.4 mm seatpost, a diameter that nobody else ever used. Thankfully the American Classic seatpost that came with the bike is in great shape.

7400 crankset

Dura-Ace 7400 derailleur

Other component highlights include the Shimano Dura-Ace 7400 parts group, the Mavic Open Pro rims and an original Salsa handlebar stem (by “original” we mean that it’s one that Salsa founder Ross Schafer made himself).

Yep. There’s a lot of baggage that comes with a family heritage. In 1991, if asked who made this Paramount the salesperson probably responded “Schwinn”. In 2019, we answer the same question with the answer “Waterford”.

1988 Kas – Canal 10 Team Replica Vitus Carbone 9

1988 Kas – Canal 10 Team Replica Vitus Carbone 9

If you were a bike racing fan in the 1980’s, you probably thought that this was the coolest bike you had ever seen. We sure did.

The Vitus “Carbone 9” Kas – Canal 10 racing team bike. The frame was an early carbon (or Carbone, if you’re French) fiber model built very similarly to Vitus’ 979 aluminum bikes. The carbon tubes were glued into aluminum lugs (9 tubes if you count the upper and lower seat stays as separate tubes like Vitus did), resulting in a slightly stiffer and lighter (18 lbs) bike than the standard aluminum version.
The Kas team had a pretty international flavor despite having Spanish title sponsors. The superstar racer on the team was Irish and the bikes were very French.

Mavic brakes made by Modolo

Vitus Carbone 9

Reydel GTI saddle

Mavic supplied all of the components, not just the wheels. Despite being from the same Mavic component “group”, the parts had all kinds of different designations. The derailleur is the 850 model. The stem is the 365 and the bars are the 350. The crank is the 630, the cartridge bottom bracket is the 610, and the shifters are 800’s. The model 500 hubs are laced into Mavic GL330 rims.

Front end detail

Mavic Drivetrain

GL330 rims

Sharp-eyed bike nerds (you know who you are) will note that the headset on our team replica is a Stronglight model, not the Mavic 310 as used by the team. A funny problem with these old bike projects… We have the headset but cannot find the tools to adjust the Mavic headset once it is installed… So for now, the Stronglight.

Kas, Sean Kelly & Mavic at the 1988 Tour de France

Vitus counts these as 4 tubes in their “9” total

The view from the back

Somebody out there would probably also like to point out that Sean Kelly, the Kas team star, used toe clips not Look ski-binding style pedals (and standard brake levers) in 1988, so our bike is all wrong. While it’s true that Sean stuck to toe clips & straps, by the time the Tour de France rolled around that year, six of his teammates were using Look clipless pedals and most of the riders (other than Sean) were using the model 440 brakes like on our bike.

Also, we hate toe clips and like older bikes in spite of them, not because of them. Nobody wants a 1957 Chevy Corvette simply because it lacks seatbelts, right?

Mavic 630 crank, Look pedals

Mavic 800 shifters by Simplex

Mavic 500 hub, Maillard freewheel

These bikes were a real advantage for the Kas team. During times of rapidly changing materials and design standards, it’s always easier to be on the cutting edge. In 1988 a number of teams were riding steel bikes (from Colnago, Gitane, and Eddy Merckx for example) built with Campagnolo Record “C” parts. These were likely to be 22 pound bikes. A four or five pound difference in overall bike weight for the hills (like aerodynamic advantages during time trials) could mean the difference between success and failure for racers of the era.

Bike trivia bonus: Kas is a Spanish line of soft drinks produced by Pepsi and Canal 10 is a Spanish television network. The bike racing team folded in 1989 after director Jean de Gribaldi died in a car crash.

1990 Trek 8900 Pro

1990 Trek 8900 Pro

A thirty year old mountain bike. That’s a pretty long time… Is it any fun?

More than you would imagine,

We’ve taken this one out on the trails a few times and have been surprised as much by the ways in which this old bike feels awesome as by the elements that are really irritating.

First, the overall design. This is from 1990 so of course it’s a hardtail with 26” wheels with 2” wide tires. The frame has some carbon fiber tubing and there’s Rock Shox’s first suspension fork on the front with about 2” of air-sprung travel. The handlebars are narrow and the reach is fairly long.

Trek head badge

Rock Shox RS-1

Early carbon fiber tubing

On smooth singletrack with a lot of tight twists and turns, this old Trek handles better than a modern bike (surprise!). The wheelbase is much shorter than a modern bike, so it’s easy to change directions. Now, we did switch the flat & narrow vintage handlebar for a slightly more modern (and 4” wider) riser bar, and we found ourselves avoiding roots and rocks instead of hitting them head on, but still.

Suntour Xpress shifters

Matrix labeled Cook Bros. cranks

Grafton brakes

The Rock Shox fork? The original air-sprung suspension took an edge off of the big hits, but the rebound was really slow and you had to rely on the tires alone to absorb small bumps. The 2” wide tires? The traction and stability associated with modern 29” wheels or wide 27s was missed.

How about the brakes? The Grafton cantilever brakes worked great, and the Suntour levers have a spongy rubber cover that is really nice and comfortable but we’ll have to call the test ride an easy one for the brakes. The trails were dry, and the test rider is light. Modern disc brakes are fabulous.

Mt. Zefal pump

Suntour XC Pro

What about the shifting and the gearing? Well, it was pretty nice having 21 possible gear combinations. That said, actually shifting among them with the old Suntour Xpress shifters was noisy and not very precise, and while we didn’t have to deal with “chain suck” thanks to the Cook Bros. crank, the whole gear range was pretty high.

Shimano’s original SPD pedals work just as well as new ones with two exceptions: There was no cleat float on the original, so you better set your cleats correctly, and watch where you step! There is no space for mud to squish through the old pedal body, so the pedals are pretty easy to clog up.

Riding around the Port Gamble trails, we didn’t miss modern frame design (or even a dropper post) one bit. The ride was a little harsh, maybe more similar to a new gravel bike than a true mountain bike, but it was still really fun.

Of course, lack of confidence in the brakes, the tires, and the suspension probably kept us in control on steep descents and technical trails as much as dropping our center of gravity with a handlebar-mounted switch ever would.

1990 Specialized Allez Epic

Specialized Allez Epic

Some of the bikes in our museum are a complete mystery when we first touch them. We may have never heard of the brand, or the builder in question may have died decades earlier. Sometimes we have to figure out really ancient or just esoteric components without the help of a repair manual. Quick fixes, restorations and first test rides are sometimes total mysteries and it’s either a lot of fun or a pain when you don’t know what to expect.

There’s no mystery with this bike.

This is a 1990 Specialized Allez Epic carbon fiber road bike. Specialized made these high tech (but affordable) road models from 1989 until 1994. Each model year there were usually three versions, one with Shimano 105 components, one with 600 Ultegra, and one with Dura-Ace parts. If you were an amateur bike racer in those days it was pretty common to see a bunch of these bikes lined up at local road races.

210 miles across Minnesota in one day

I bought one of these bikes in 1992. The version that you see here isn’t the exact bike (I sold that one to my friend Jay in 1998), but this one is outfitted exactly as my old Allez. The Specialized Tri-spoke wheels are in fact from that old bike, as are the Scott Drop-in handlebars and probably the Time pedals.

I don’t think I know any bike model as well as I know one of these. So a long-term product review is probably in order.

Outfitted as you see it, this is a pretty fast 22 pound bike. The Allez Epic climbs reasonably well (despite the 39 x 23 low gear) and you can call it a racing bike but it was not very stiff. “Soft” is how I’d describe the ride, and that was a good thing. You could ride one of these bikes for hours and hours. The aluminum fork really flexed, and the comfort while riding over crappy pavement was just terrific.

Time pedals, Dura-Ace 7400 parts

7400 derailleur, titanium cassette

Flite saddle

Yep, the ride comfort is (or was) great. Just don’t try hanging on to the interior drop section of the bars when the roads are bad. The handling was a little loose and you’re not Greg LeMond.

The Dura-Ace 7400 parts have stood the test of time. They worked great then and they still do. You can even set them up without the aid of an owners’ manual.

I was about to write something about the bike not being very aerodynamic by today’s standards, but I bet that I’m wrong about that. If you consider that it rolls on top of Specialized Trispoke wheels (now made by Hed), and given the theoretical ability to ride way down and narrow on the LeMond Drop-in bars, this Allez is probably more aerodynamic in many aspects than a modern bike.

Scott Drop-ins, Avocet 30

Front end detail

Back end detail

As far as long-term product reviews go, 10,000 miles and dozens of bike races is probably enough to deliver a verdict on the Allez Epic. Let’s call it a reliable bike with outstanding comfort and terrific components at a good price. Four stars. Of course, seeing as how Specialized stopped making these models in 1995, a fat lot of good my review will do anyone now. Oh, well.

1996 U.S. Olympic Team GT Superbike

1996 Olympic Team GT Superbike 2

There are really two stories to be told about this bike. First there’s a bike review about the technical details and construction methods that’ll add up to what you see here. Second is the development story and what the Superbike represents.

Technically, this bike was (and really still is) a modern marvel. Many hours were spent in the GM wind tunnel perfecting the aerodynamics of this bike. Carbon fiber and aluminum construction methods were pushed to the limit (for the mid ’90′s).  The head tube, with the fork running through it and some nylon bushings providing the headset function, is only one inch wide. The hubs and bottom bracket are half of the normal width for these parts. There are no seatstays. There is no top tube. Knobby protrusions like the seatpost and saddle clamps have been eliminated. I think the final number was 3.5 pounds of aerodynamic drag at 30 mph (about a third of the drag of a normal track bike).

Mavic 3-spoke wheel

I think there were about a dozen first generation Superbikes and prototypes, another dozen road time trial variants and eight of these “Superbike 2’s” built in total. They were all very custom and quirky. Of these track models, each one was built to fit a specific athlete (there was really no way to change the way the bikes fit beyond a half inch here or there), so measurements were taken like a tailor was going to sew these bikes together. Without skateboard deck tape on the ends of the handlebar it was nearly impossible to maintain any grip on the bike. In order to change the gear ratios, we mechanics had to have a tackle box filled with dozens of little steel plates, each plate with a hole drilled in different spots for the axle bolts to tension the chain and fasten the rear wheel through them.

Custom aero bars

Shortened saddle

All of these bikes were really aerodynamic and they gave the athletes who raced them every confidence that they were competing aboard state of the art technology.

…And then in the year 2000 the UCI changed the rules regarding bike design so now these bikes can’t be raced in any sanctioned event and will just gather dust…

So that’s the story of this bike. The story about the Superbike program is something else.

The Superbike story started with a very American belief in technology. Special bikes were built for the ’84 Olympics, and the U.S. won quite a few medals. Then at the ’92 Olympics in Barcelona, an unknown rider from Great Britain won the individual pursuit gold aboard a very special bike from Lotus. The results from these two Olympic games made people think that results are all about the bike.
If you start with a belief in technology over the human element, this of course makes sense.

Mavic drivetrain

Technology company EDS (anyone remember H. Ross Perot?) came on board as the main sponsor for USA Cycling in the 1990′s. With a lot of fanfare and tons of money EDS launched “Project 96″, a.k.a. the superbike program. They purchased wind tunnel time, paid for consultants, materials and lots of prototypes.

This was supposed to be a secret program with bikes unveiled at the Olympics (the athletes didn’t really get to ride their bikes until the month before the opening ceremony). When the bikes were revealed in Atlanta, however, nobody was shocked. In fact, the French, German and Australian teams were riding fairly similar bikes.

See, the funny part was that EDS and GT bicycles had actually had press releases to announce their secret bike program (not a great way to keep a secret if you ask me). While French component company Mavic (who was manufacturing most of the components) promised not to tell anyone about the super-secret wheels and bike parts, they of course provided the French Olympic team with identical equipment.

1996 U.S. Pursuit Team

Some of the press releases alternately labeled Project 96 as a “$40 million program” or reported that the Superbikes were $5 million bikes. Now, I’m pretty sure that the dollar amounts were inflated or at least they were totals for a whole sponsorship package where the money was spread out to cover operating expenses of the National Team, but you can imagine what happened with that kind of press. Foreign teams thought they were in an arms race, so they took another look at their bikes. Our own athletes (and mechanics, and soigneurs) were iritated by the press coverage. We all thought that if millions of dollars were coming into the team, how come we were still struggling with poverty while the team was spending huge sums on equipment?

Two things were certain: One is that any technical advantage and the element of surprise was lost (over a year prior to the games), and two is that money that could have been spent on athlete development and team support instead went into the bikes.

3.5 pounds of drag at 30mph

Well, maybe the money didn’t go all into the bikes, but it sure didn’t get spent on the athletes. Let’s talk coaching. There were some great coaches on the U.S. team in those days, but Craig Griffin, the coach for the endurance track team, was awful. Craig got a big share of the budget for the endurance track program but failed to produce. Craig was directly responsible for injuring Rebecca Twigg prior to the ’95 World Championships, and he was at least partly responsible for her quitting the Atlanta Olympics on the eve of her event. Craig’s inability to identify and nurture new talent resulted in the U.S. team relying on a 42 year old man for the Olympic individual pursuit (Kent Bostick was a great racer but was he really the fastest guy we could have found?), and zero medals by any of his athletes.

Erin Hartwell, part of the track sprint program (coached by Andje Bek) earned a silver medal in the kilometer time trial. His was the only medal that could be linked in any way to the Superbike program, and one of just three medals awarded to U.S. cyclists at the Atlanta Games.

A knife through the air

Back at the ’84 Olympics we had “super’ bikes that were raced by some of the best athletes we’ve ever had in this country. Davis Phinney (who has the most pro wins of any U.S. rider in history), Connie Carpenter, Alexi Grewal, Rebecca Twigg, Steve Hegg, Harvey Nitz, Ron Kiefel and Roy Knickman made up the backbone of the U.S. team. They were such a talented bunch of riders that the bikes, in my opinion, were inconsequential. Oh yeah, and the Soviets stayed home.

What about the ’92 games? The reality in Barcelona was that the super-fast Lotus track bike was raced by Chris Boardman. Chris Boardman was an unknown rider at the time, but he was on a path to becoming a world champion, yellow jersey wearer, hour record holder and one of the greatest time trialists in cycling history.

I’m sure it’s a mistake we’ll continue to make every four years, but if anyone from the Olympic committee ever asks you your opinion, just remind them that it’s not all about the bike.

1989 Marin Eldridge Grade

1990 Marin Eldridge Grade

You have probably noticed that we have a number of mountain bikes from the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s in our museum collection. You’re probably wondering what’s special about this one.

Well, nothing in particular. This is just a nice bike made out of Tange steel tubing, outfitted with Shimano Deore and Deore LX parts.  The rims were made by the French Wolber company, a dominant brand in the 1980’s rim and tire market (Wolber‘s rim division was purchased by Mavic in the 1990’s and Wolber tires became Michelin tires).

Marin’s bike offerings from 30 years ago were primarily about value, the frame design ideas of the month, and colors that were on trend.

Rigid front fork

Deore thubshifters

American made

Wolber AT18 rim

Deore LX parts

Tange steel

So there’s nothing super special about this bike.  What’s the deal?

We like the paint scheme on this one.

High-tech bikes in this era were usually made out of carbon fiber or aluminum tubing that was glued into cast aluminum lugs.  The black carbon tubes were typically left bare to show off the carbon fabric weave, and the lugs were painted or polished. Specialized had the Allez, Trek made the 2300, There were bikes from Look, TVT, Vitus, Bridgestone and Colnago all in this style.

Pretty similar…

Style Icon?

This bike is made out of TIG-welded steel.  We think it’s awesome that the paint job on this bike was either meant to fit in with the cool kids that were made out of bonded carbon fiber, or it was a deliberate attempt to fool consumers.

1987 Kestrel 4000

Kestrel 4000

This Kestrel 4000 was the road bike star of 1987, gracing the covers of every cycling magazine (and quite a few technology magazines) that hit the newstands.

Kestrel was really the first company to take full advantage of the carbon fiber material.  Carbon had been used previously, but in the traditional round tubing shapes and lugged style contruction familiar to bike brands that were used to steel and aluminum bike building.  Kestrel designer Brent Trimble started with a clean sheet of paper.  The graceful, flowing lines of the carbon monocoque construction looked cutting edge.  Cables were routed inside the frame for a smooth finish. The aerodynamic cutout for the rear wheel was ahead of the curve (so to speak), and it just seemed so fast.

Internally routed cables made it more “aero”

The aero wheel cutout was ahead of the curve (so to speak)

The parts show off some other great fads and innovations from the era. There’s a Selle San Marco Concor saddle in the perforated white leather (can’t remember if the perforation was awesome because it made the saddle lighter or if it was a comfort thing).  We have the bike equipped with first generation Look pedals, which I think were the PP65 model, sometimes called “sport” pedals and really the first commercially successful ski-binding type pedals.  The Matrix rims are “aero” shaped instead of box-shaped, a design style that is evident on so many racing wheels today.  On the front end we have the leather-wrapped Modolo handlebars, which were the first bars to have the flat “anatomical” section in the drops.

Campagnolo’s big and beautiful Delta Brakes

Modolo anatomic handlebars wrapped in leather

Campy’s C Record crank and Look pedals

With futuristic style to spare, you would have looked like you just pulled this bike off of the roof of your Delorean time machine as you lined up at your local category four road race.  The only items needed to complete the effect would be a lycra-covered Giro Prolight and some neon green Oakley sunglasses…

A Green Klein

A tribute to the most famous bike on television

What’s the deal with green mountain bikes?

This is our tribute to the most famous bike in American pop culture.

A green Klein Pinnacle.

The original was a model from 1987, built up with mostly Suntour XC pro equipment, a Klein Mission Control 1-piece handlebar and stem, pedals with toe clips, an Avocet gel saddle and a black cromoly rigid fork (which was installed backwards for the better part of a year).

Millions of people saw the bike that we’re talking about every week. Laughed at it, actually.

On Thursday nights.

A blue Cannondale was called in as an understudy when the original Klein was stolen from the set.

It can currently be seen nearly everyday in syndication.

No idea what we’re talking about?

No bike for you! Next!

Alright, if you didn’t watch TV in the 1990’s and find this little riddle irritating, here’s the answer:

Gotta love the ‘90’s.

We’re talking about the Seinfeld apartment-set Klein.

For five seasons a bike like this one was in the background every time Kramer made an entrance, George had to kvetch, or Elaine and Jerry discussed really nothing at all.
As far as we can tell, it was only removed from its hallway hook in one episode (Jerry’s nudist girlfriend tunes it up, leading Jerry to mention that the bike was really only for show).

1986 American Comp Lite

1986 American Comp Lite

The year is 1986. You’re in the market for one of those “All-Terrain Bikes” that everyone is talking about. You don’t want to buy anything imported, which is lucky since mountain bikes were invented in the U.S. only a few years previous and pretty much every option worth riding is produced domestically. Which make will it be? Something from one of the original Marin County California pioneers? An aluminum Klein made in Washington state? A bike from the rocky mountain region like a Moots out of Colorado? An east-coast Cannondale? It’s hard to decide.

A good match

American, not American Flyer

The actual head badge

My suggestion at the time would have been this: Shop north.

In 1986, the finest mountain bikes in the world were being produced far away from any actual mountains. In Minnesota.

American Bicycle Manufacturing (ABM) of St. Cloud had some awesome mountain bike options. There was the Joe Breeze signature “Breezer”, the adjustable head-angle “Montaneus”, and the race-ready “Comp Lite”.

All of American’s bikes featured aluminum tubing (in smaller diameters than what Klein or Cannondale used) with slightly thicker walls for durability. Durability was a big selling point, in fact. Ad copy would point out that scratches could be buffed out, and that paint could be repeatedly applied and stripped over the years, a fresh look for your bike whenever you felt like making the effort.

Nitto Bullmoose bar

XT cranks, Rollercam brake

What else? Deore XT 6-speed

Speaking of fresh looks, our Comp Lite had only it’s top tube decal still intact when we got it. Instead of reproducing the original headtube badge we thought this would be a good place to honor another defunct bicycle company, hence the “American Flyer” badges on the head and seat tubes.

Comp Lite front end

Breeze & Angel XL Hite Rite

Bridgeless seatstays

While I would have suggested a Comp Lite to anyone who asked my opinion back in 1986, I didn’t own one. The bridgeless back end (no seatstay bridge or chainstay bridge) was cool looking, and offered extra bump compliance. The Koski Duratrac fork handled great. The XT components were the gold standard for performance and reliability. Araya RM20 rims ruled. The bike was a solid choice. Why didn’t I follow my own bike shopping advice? The bike was an expensive option compared to others and I wasn’t patient enough to save my part-time bike shop salary to get one.

Panasonic Individual Custom System 1988

1988 Panasonic custom titanium

Industrial giant Panasonic has been making bicycles in Japan for decades.  In the 1970′s and 80′s, Panasonic bikes were quite popular in the U.S, with obviously good brand recognition and a high quality selection from which to choose.

In 1987, Panasonic launched PICS, their Individual Custom System.  Get a high quality custom Panasonic bike of your own design in two to six weeks!  Bike shops like Classic Cycle were given a Panasonic combination TV/VHS tape player, which could be set up in the shop to play a looping video showing a factory tour and explaining it all:

A pump peg for a full size frame pump

Scott-LeMond DropIn handlebars

Your name goes here

First, a customer would select a bike style: road, track, time trial or mountain.  For the road bike frames you could pick either Tange Prestige steel or titanium tubing.  There were eight mountain bike size options and about sixteen road bike sizes to get just the right fit (not a bad selection for a semi-custom bike).

Regina hollow pin chain

Campagnolo's Chorus group

Components could be selected from two tiers of Shimano mountain bike equipment, and Shimano 105, 600, Sante’, or Dura-Ace groups for the road bikes.  A glossy brochure showed all of the paint styles available with one, two and three color stripes, panels, and fades.  The bike shop would have a dozen sample frame tubes on hand painted with all of the bright options (there was probably about a thousand different paint schemes available).  The PICS buyer had 12 letters with which to spell out their name, which would then be laser etched into the handlebar stem or silkscreened onto the top tube.

Panasonic PICS paint samples

Once all of the selections were made, the order form was faxed to Japan on the bike shop’s new Panasonic facsimile machine (super high-tech!), you waited a few weeks, and voila!  Federal Express dropped off your new bike.

This particular bike was customized for an “R. McReynolds” in fashionable lavender and polished titanium.  We don’t believe that Campagnolo equipment was ever an option straight from Japan, and this bike was most likely given a new component group in about 1991 or ’92.

My personal PICS bike was a red, white, and blue steel mountain bike with Deore XT equipment from 1988 and ”P.R. Johnson” on the top tube.  It took fourteen days to get it from Japan, and it was stolen during my sophomore year of college.  Anyone seen it?

1988 Panasonic PICS Titanium Road Bike

1988 Panasonic PICS Titanium

Yes, this bike does look quite a bit like the lavender Panasonic in the previous post.

It should. It’s the same bike.

We reconfigured the bike to be a better representative of the Panasonic custom program. Now, we at Classic Cycle feel that it’s just fine to mix the nationalities of your bike parts… Japanese parts on an Italian frame, Italian stuff on an English bike, American or Taiwanese components on a Chinese frame. So we wouldn’t normally have any problem with Campagnolo equipment on a Panasonic. It’s just that in this instance the bike is telling a story about the company and the buying experience.

Panasonic badge

Panasonic titanium

Dura-Ace 7400

Anyhow… Shimano Dura-Ace 7400 parts would have been a choice on the PICS order form (although we updated it a bit with the STI brake/shift levers from 1990). Araya rims would have come with the bike and Panaracer (that’s Panasonic’s tire label) tubular tires were the professional option with the PICS program, so that’s what we have here.

Dura-Ace caliper

The first STI lever

Avocet 20 computer

Modolo bars and stem aren’t original but they were a common upgrade in ’88. The flattened “anatomical” drops were supposed to be more comfortable for your hands but most modern handlebars have returned to using curved sections for the drops. Other nearly correct selections include Look ski-binding style pedals (Shimano licensed the Look design back then and we could have found some for this bike but didn’t), there’s a San Marco Rolls saddle and an Avocet 20 computer.

San Marco Rolls saddle

Look pedals, 7400 crank

PICS Ad 1988

Now the paint (or lack of it) isn’t very special considering that a huge selling point of the PICS program was all of the custom colors and styles. A fair criticism, however this bike is made out of titanium. If you were ordering yourself a $3200 road bike in the go-go ’80′s (a $6500 bike in today’s dollars), you would want everyone to know that you had paid for the best. So our museum bike now boasts a finish just like the bike in the magazine ads.

1989 Ritchey Ascent Comp

1989 Ritchey Ascent Comp

I have always been a Ritchey fan.

Just like the road bike aficionado who fell into Colnago, De Rosa, Pinarello or Eddy Merckx camps, early mountain bikers tended to be Gary Klein, Tom Ritchey, Gary Fisher or Salsa (Ross Schafer) boosters. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you rode one of these bikes, it just means that you wanted to.

To be a Ritchey fan meant an appreciation for early West-Coast mountain bike design. Elements like slack head tube angles, forks with a lot of rake, oversized (and force-directional) Japanese steel tubing, wide Bullmoose handlebars and fillet-brazed frame joints are all in fact either Ritchey firsts or ideas that Tom championed.

XT Thumb shifters

Front end

Deore XT M732

This Ascent Comp is a beautiful example of late ’80′s mountain bike cool. The bike rides smoothly over rough trails thanks to the aforementioned force-directional Tange steel tubing and slack frame angles. There’s no bullmoose-style handlebar, but there is a Ritchey Force stem with an integrated cable hanger and a 22″ wide Force bar. The components are all modern marvels.

Built by Tom

Back end

Deore XT M732

The Shimano Deore XT M732 shifters are indexed (7 speeds in the back!), the brake levers operate with two fingers instead of your whole hand, the rear hub holds a cassette of cogs instead of a screw-on freewheel, and the chainrings are oval Biopace shape (or were. We changed them out for round ones).
This bike is also outfitted with the original Shimano off-road clipless pedal, the M-737. No toe clips? We’re probably more nostalgic about old bikes than anyone, but toe clips and straps were awful, so a vintage SPD pedal for your vintage mountain bike is really the best way to go.

1997 Bontrager Race Lite

Vintage Bontrager Race Lite

It probably isn’t fair to Trek, but there is a group of modern classic bikes today that hold their value better simply because they came along “Before Trek ruined things”.

Have an old Klein mountain or road bike? The versions that were made before Trek took over the company are worth a lot more than the ones that came after.

Looking for a LeMond racing bike? You’re probably interested in finding a LeMond-badged bike that TVT, Clark Kent or Calfee made, not something that Trek produced following their mid-‘90’s deal with Greg.

Vintage Gary Fisher mountain bikes are almost all pre-Trek, as the label was killed off almost immediately after Trek hired/merged with/bought out Gary Fisher.

Marzocci Bomber

1997 Deore XT

Bontrager dropouts

Keith Bontrager’s bikes? Pre-Trek Bontragers have certainly held their value better than anything Bontrager-badged after being hired/bought out by Trek in 1995. There are a couple of transition years, however, where the Bontrager frame shop in Santa Cruz operated under the Trek umbrella and still produced some fabulous bikes.
Really, Keith Bontrager is the only bike industry icon that survived a Trek takeover with his legacy pretty much intact.

Bontrager is a brilliant engineer who came into the bike world from motorcycles in the late ‘70’s. Utilizing his experience as a motocross mechanic (and his physics degree), Bontrager bikes began with custom mountain bike rims and steel frames. Bontrager steel frames have strong joints augmented by load-distributing gussets and sometimes with mechanically joined (via rivets & glue) attachment points for derailleurs, cables or bottle cages instead of brazing. This was an attempt to reduce the weakening effect of repeatedly heating and cooling the steel tubing when welding these areas. Bontrager’s frames had seat stays made with larger diameter tubing in the upper area which added torsional stiffness around the brake-bosses joined to lighter and more flexible tubing below the brakes to add greater bump compliance.

V-brakes

Tubing gussets

USE post

This bike came out of Keith’s Santa Cruz workshop during the early years of his work with Trek. It’s built of steel tubing (naturally), and displays all of the signature Bontrager reinforcements and design touches. The Shimano Deore XT equipment, Marzocci coil-sprung Bomber fork, USE suspension seat post and the low, flat handlebars are all popular mountain bike specs of the era.

Today, Bontrager’s name is stamped on most of the parts and accessories made by the Trek company. Keith probably still has a hand in designing a fair amount of the components (their handlebars and wheels are brilliant) but we doubt Keith has any say in the design of Bontrager cycling socks, bells or baskets.

1991 Trek 8700 Pro

1991 Trek 8700 Pro

This should be a bike that fuels your imagination.

A top tier mountain bike from 1991. But not just any mountain bike from that year, a Trek 8700 Pro.
The 8700 was built in Trek’s Wisconsin workshop out of “graphite composite tubes” (the industry hadn’t settled on “carbon fiber” yet in 1991 and were still trying out words like “composite” and “graphite” to see what would become the common label). Those tubes were joined with epoxy to aluminum stays and an aluminum head tube.

Tioga T-Bone stem

The original Rock Shox fork

Turbo Special saddle

The fork is the original Rock Shox model, an air-pressure sprung invention with machined aluminum legs that turned out to be quite durable (30 years later this one still works). The Suntour XC Pro drivetrain (3 x 7 gears), Dia-Compe 986 cantilever brakes, Shimano M737 pedals, Bullseye hubs and Selle Italia’s “Turbo Special” saddle meant business. Fast business.

On the cusp of a technological revolution for mountain bikes, this 1991 model was meant to be a game changer. Lighter, smoother and faster than anything that had come before. According to Trek, this was a bike that would not only win races but it would also win your heart.

Bullseye hubs

Suntour XC Pro

Dia-Compe cantilevers

We get it, but thirty years later we’re imagining this bike in a different way. The mountain bike revolution has happened, and all sorts of technologies have surpassed the first steps taken here. The neon orange paint, once meant to be modern and hip like an episode of Miami Vice is back again but today it’s as a safety feature to keep mountain bikers from being shot at in the woods during hunting season or to help get noticed by distracted drivers while on the road.

Times change.

“Graphite Composite”

Rock Shox RS-1

Keep this bike in mind while you consider doing the Cascadia Super Gravel race or a Gravel Gran Fondo across Kansas. A bike like this would be perfect for riding one of these new events. Then again, a mountain bike race on an antique would be so much fun! Imagine doing one of the Northwest Epic mountain bike races on a bike older than the winning rider! You’ll score yourself more free swag than he’ll get, we’re pretty sure.

Then again, imagine this bike hanging in your rec room next to the neon Fat Tire Ale sign…

1992 Trek 9500 Suspension Mountain Bike

1992 Trek 9500 mountain bike

As of today, mountain bikes have been around for only about forty years.  Design-wise, there has been quite a bit of progress in that short amount of time.

This Trek 9500 from 1992 shows us some great leaps forward as well as some serious stumbles in mountain bike evolution.

Highlights include Shimano’s first edition XTR mountain bike component group.  The engineering was superb, the cold-forged components were built to last for decades, and this group included many fantastic features like rapid-fire trigger shifting that we still use today.

Trek’s DDS3 suspension fork had some nice touches too. It used a schraeder valve to fill the air chambers unlike Rock Shox’s needle valve of the time, and the adjustable air-sprung fork was closer to what we use now than the brief bike industry-wide foray into elastomer bumper forks.

DDS3 suspension fork

The donut stack was temperature sensitive

The first XTR derailleur

We’ll give Trek a small break as we describe the rear suspension design (since it was designed in 1991), but we still need to give the Wisconsin based company some grief. The spring unit attached to the swing arm was made out of urethane donuts… Which was obviously temperature sensitive… Which should have been clear to anyone designing a bike in a place that reaches 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer and twenty below zero in the winter. So obviously the rear suspension reacted differently in different weather. Sometimes it felt like a rigid frame (with something seriously wrong) and sometimes it felt like the tires had just gone flat (and wouldn’t spring back).

A long stretch

Front end detail

Trek badge

Overall, the bike bobbed a bit like an inch-worm with little spring rebound control and no suspension isolation from pedaling forces… But it was a decent first attempt.

This bike came from Reliable Cycle, our Classic Cycle satellite store in the Rolling Bay neighborhood on Bainbridge Island.  This bike was part of the regular inventory, and it got folded into the museum collection when the store closed in 1998.

Eric Stirling’s 1980’s Cunningham Cyclocross bike

Cunningham CX

Charlie Cunningham’s genius couldn’t be contained within the mountain bike world. During his most productive years Charlie designed and built a few road bikes and five or six cyclocross machines.

This particular bike belonged to our friend Eric Stirling, and we got our hands on it briefly before shipping it off to Tasshi Dennis for a complete restoration.  

An aside: if the bike history that really interests you happens to be early mountain bikes and Northern California‘s innovators, Tasshi and his Vintage Mountain Bike Workshop simply cannot be missed.
 http://www.vintagemtbworkshop.com/the-collection.html

So Charlie Cunningham was really the perfect guy for Cyclocross equipment in 1980’s America. Cyclocross was the smallest niche in a niche sport. The unique conditions that you’ll find at a cyclocross race (winter temperatures, mud, snow, pavement & ice) meant the equipment faced unique demands.

Most wanna-be cyclocrossers slid around on road bikes with little to no stopping power and with tire traction that was even worse.

Head tube gussets

Cunningham hub

Some riders tried racing on early mountain bikes (with road handlebars installed), but those guys could barely lift their heavy bikes over barriers and run-ups were slow.

Cyclocross in America in the ‘80’s was usually raced aboard frankenbikes. Road racing bikes with touring forks installed, cantilever brakes providing greater clearance for specially imported knobby tubular tires. Campagnolo made chainring guards that could be bolted onto either side of a single front chainring. A bar-end shifter would be installed.

Brake bridge detail

Shimano 600

One visit to Charlie Cunningham would have made some of these equipment headaches go away. Need a light road-racing frame built that has reinforcements to handle the extra abuse? Okay. Want to run a touring freewheel (remember, this was really an era when even mountain-bike equipment was borrowed technology) and a long-cage derailleur? Easy. Need clearance around the tires, fork crown, seat stays and brakes so mud doesn’t stop the wheels from spinning? Not even a challenge. Want the whole bike under 20 pounds? That’s why you went to Charlie in the first place.

1994 Trek 9800

1994 Trek 9800

A 1994 Trek 9800 mountain bike in Ice Green. According to Trek it was “So light it turned our competition Ice Green with envy”.

Doubtful.

In 1994 Trek was just scrambling to catch up with their competition in the mountain bike market. Nobody was looking at them with anything close to envy. Specialized, GT, Diamondback, Klein, Cannondale, Mongoose, and even Bianchi were producing more popular mountain bikes than Trek.

This Carbon fiber 9800 model (particularly with the Rockshox Mag 21 suspension fork upgrade) was a step back in the right direction, however. Trek aluminum bikes at the time were heavy and felt dead when compared to other brands. The glued socket construction method meant that there was an inch of overlapping material at every frame joint. Early Trek suspension bikes were an obvious joke when compared to contemporary GT RTS models, Specialized Stumpjumper FSRs or really anything else.

OCLV carbon fiber

Rockshox Mag 21

Grip shifters and bar ends

With the 9800 Trek had a light and lively mountain bike that held it’s own against the competition and heralded the company’s openness to new ideas.

It was unusual to build a smooth and stealthy-looking carbon mountain bike in ‘94. Marketing was all about ruggedness and resistance to some pretty weird hypothetical abuse (reinforcing gussets were added to some interesting places on frames and bike companies were still strangely fixated on seatstays that might flex or twist). Some riders avoided carbon fiber out of repair fantasies that involved welding torches and anvils, not glue & scissors.

The worst brake solution ever

Deore XT M739

Quick release lever and multi-tool in one

This model does have a great mix of parts for 1994. There’s the Rockshox Mag 21, which was really the best fork available during the 1990’s as the elastomer fork suspension fad played out to it’s mushy end in about 2000. The Deore XT equipment was, as always, a benchmark for how bike parts were supposed to work.

The long handlebar stem and even longer bar ends were quite literally a bit much. The rear brake actuation cam gives bike mechanics headaches to this day, but the Ice Green color sure was nice.

1987 Schwinn Cimarron

1987 Schwinn Cimarron

Schwinn nostalgia is often misplaced.

People look back fondly on Schwinn’s balloon-tire cruisers of the 1950’s. We understand. Those were pretty stylish bikes, but they were outrageously heavy and inefficient… And they were designed for children who sometimes weighed less than the Schwinn they were riding.

Some Schwinn fans reminisce about the 5-speed Sting-Ray or Krate models, bikes that when ridden aggressively were likely to impale the rider with a handlebar end or the shifter knob, bend a fork or break a frame.

Some folks reminisce about Schwinn road bikes… Don’t get us started on the Schwinn Varsity 10-speed.

This Schwinn Cimarron, on the other hand, deserves some nostalgia.

In 1987, Schwinn had it right. This mountain bike was designed with a slack head tube angle and lots of fork rake, nice design elements that made the bike handle beautifully on the trails and kept the rider fairly stable at high speeds. The old Nitto handlebars were wide and put the rider in a comfortable upright position, and the ergonomic molded grips felt great.

Laid back front end

Just like modern Ergon grips

Reinforced tubing ends

The frame was made with strong and springy Tange steel tubing. Schwinn picked some of the best components available at the time too. There’s the venerable Shimano Deore XT component group (18 “Indexed” speeds), Araya RM-20 rims (simply the best available in ‘87), a Suntour XC Pro seatpost and a Nitto stem (with the front brake cable stop drilled into it).

Deore XT cranks with BioPace rings

Early Deore XT equipment

The original saddle didn’t survive…

Unfortunately, if you love Schwinn for the “Made in America” thing, this one doesn’t quite do it. This particular Cimarron was designed in America (really well) but built in Japan. And sold in Bellevue.

Actually, about a quarter of all Schwinns sold in 1987 were still made in America.  The Chicago headquarters handled design, marketing and logistics with a manufacturing plant in Greenville Mississippi building frames and assembling a portion of the bikes. We have been informed by more than one former Schwinn employee that these Cimarron models were made in Mississippi. We’ll take their word for it, but this particular bike has a “Made in Japan” decal on it so we’d have to assume this one came from Schwinn’s Japanese contractor Panasonic who produced the rest of the line.

Cantilever brakes

From Bellevue Schwinn

So one of the reasons we think this ‘87 Schwinn is a great bike is that mountain bike design departments went a little nuts in the ‘90’s. It’s fun to see early bikes like this one had it right in the first place. At least, it’s fun to see the industry return a bit to where things started. Mellow-handling bikes, wide handlebars, upright riding position, function over form.

If you were designing a mountain bike in the ‘90’s, you kind of forgot that in order to go fast and have fun a rider needed to be comfortable on their bike and that riders had to be able to steer around obstacles. Instead of making bikes like this Schwinn, a ‘90’s era bike would have handlebars that were 5 inches narrower set 6 inches lower with a much steeper fork angle that got progressively steeper as the 2 inches of suspension travel compressed.

Maybe people aren’t nostalgic for their old Schwinn Cimarrons because they fell on their heads a few too many times while riding their next bikes.

1988 Eddy Merckx Corsa

1988 Eddy Merckx Corsa

This Eddy Merckx Corsa is the absolute perfect bike for an American racing fan of a certain age. If you happened to be into bike racing in the 1980’s and early ‘90’s you already know why. For everyone else who wants to know, I’ll try to explain.

First of all, Eddy Merckx was the greatest bike racer who ever lived, and upon retiring from the circuit in 1980 Eddy started his eponymous bike brand. Eddy Merckx Cycles quickly became one of the most prestigious labels out there.

Now, if Eddy’s name and reputation wasn’t enough to draw you in, sponsorship of the Panasonic racing team in 1986 and 1987 might be. Panasonic was a Belgian team, true, but the team had Australian Phil Anderson on it, and during Greg LeMond’s 1987 absence from bike racing Phil was likely your guy.

“E” Merckx decals to avoid confusion with other guys named Merck out there

Flat-crown fork

Dura-Ace AX seatpost

It could be that in those years an American bike racing fan would get behind 7-Eleven Team riders Andy Hampsten or Davis Phinney. So what did 7-Eleven ride? You guessed it. 7-Eleven rode Eddy Merckx bikes (bikes that were outfitted with Shimano and Cinelli parts in almost exactly the same way as this one).

7400 front derailleur

Modern Dura-Ace

Dura-Ace 7400 derailleur

Of course, the paint on this bike isn’t 7-Eleven green & red, and it’s not quite Panasonic blue & white. Nope, this one is a patriotic American in red, white & blue (which is almost better).

Skip ahead to 1991 and the 7-Eleven team switches title sponsorship to become the Motorola team. The team bikes are this exact color scheme. Phil Anderson, Andy Hampsten, Davis Phinney and a young Lance Armstrong all ride bikes that look like this one. Perfect!

Cinelli XA stem, #66 bars

Non-aero brake cable option

Single-pivot brakes

Some other awesome things about this bike is of course the parts. It has Shimano Dura-Ace 7400 components that are modern and traditional at the same time. The parts are new enough to give you indexed shifting but the bike’s old enough that the shifters are still on the frame. You get a futuristic “aero” seatpost and the rear hub features the modern “cassette” freewheel option, but the handlebars and stem are classic Cinelli (classic because these models remained available for about 40 continuous years).

Downtube “click” shifting

Look’s original “clipless” pedals

The brake levers have the traditional cable-out-the-top routing, and the tires are sew-ups (the traditional racers’ choice) but the pedals changed the game. They’re the original Look ski-binding style that made toe-clips obsolete and were first introduced by Greg LeMond.

Sure, the frame is the “Corsa”, not the “Corsa Extra” that the more powerful racers used, but that’s alright. It’s built with the flexible Columbus SL tubing instead of the super stout SLX, a distinction that makes pretending you’re a pro all the more comfortable.

I lived and breathed bike racing in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, and this bike would have been the perfect ride had I thought of it back then.

1989 Bridgestone MB-1

1989 MB-1

Here it is. The most famous “modern” bicycle in our museum collection. The Bridgestone MB-1 from 1989.

It’s not much to look at, is it? Kind of a dull paint job, fairly unassuming parts, no connection to Lance Armstrong whatsoever. Yet this bike has generated more talk in our shop while it’s been on display than just about anything else.

There have been more stories about this bike than we can count. Just like the “It” bike from 1970, the Schwinn Stingray, It seems that everybody who was riding bikes in 1989 had an MB-1. Or they wanted an MB-1, or they borrowed their roommate’s MB-1 and crashed it/won a race on it/had the most epic experience on it. A few times the storyteller has simply bemoaned the fact that they bought a Cannondale SM2000 instead of a MB-1.

As advertised

Rigid front end

Nitto seatpost

So, what makes this bike so special? We’re not sure, but we have a theory: Owning and riding a 1989 Bridgestone MB-1 marked you as a no nonsense insider, a superior athlete and a savvy shopper all at once. If you rolled up to the start line at a mountain bike race in the early ‘90’s you would have noticed an awful lot of bike shop employees and budget bike racers on these bikes. Those budget bike racers were pretty successful on their Bridgestones, thanks to a light and reliable build. The bike avoided a lot of the early mountain bike fads, so those racers didn’t have to spend time or money replacing their Biopace chainrings with round ones. They didn’t have to swap tires, shifters, stems, or handlebars on their “almost” perfect bike with the stuff they actually wanted. The Bridgestone already had the goods.

Tange Prestige tubing

Deore XT equipment

This one did lose the toe clips in favor of early SPD pedals

As the ‘90’s rolled on, the MB-1 was invariable reassigned the task of being the grocery hauler or commuting rig. Everyday city use meant that these bikes got stolen or died a rusty death, so the Bridgestone storyteller often ends their anecdote being slightly wistful, wondering what could have been if they had kept a closer eye on their beloved MB-1.

1987 Diamondback Arrival

1987 Diamondback Arrival

A Diamondback Arrival all-terrain bike from the late ’80′s.
This was a terrific “American” mountain bike that was almost entirely produced in Japan.
Outfitted with the latest in mountain bike equipment, this Arrival is a showcase for the cutting edge of technology from the time. There’s the 7000 series aluminum frame, the Tange cromoly steel rigid fork and Nitto aluminum cockpit components. The bike has the new Shimano Deore XT component group, which means it has the new indexed “click” shifting, a U-brake mounted under the chainstays, a cassette style rear hub instead of a screw-on freewheel, a seat quick-release lever and oval “Biopace” chainrings.

Cantilever front brake

…And U-brakes

1987 meant oval Biopace rings…

Mountain bikes weren’t shuffled and dealt into categories in 1987. Unlike today, there was no need to sort the models into Cross-country, Enduro, Downhill, or Freeride piles. It was easier just to pick among the good, better and best bikes (and those labels were usually just related to price).

Made in Japan

Miami Vice font?

The best bikes available seemed to be Cunningham, Klein and American aluminum bikes as well as custom steel offerings from guys like Tom Ritchey, Joe Breeze or Ross Schafer. The better group included the Arrival along with upper-end models from Specialized, Bridgestone and Panasonic. And the merely good (and not-so-good)? Any European brand that decided they should try making an off-road bike model. Colnago, Peugeot and Gitane come to mind.

Big brake levers, thumb shifters

Deore XT 730 Pedals

Deore XT 730

This is the same model all-terrain bike that I rode as a teenage bike racer. It was my “downhill” bike (hit 48mph through the speed trap at the Mammoth mountain downhill), it was my “cross-country” machine and most definitely my “ride to the video store or arcade” bike. Most mountain bike festivals at the time included dirt criteriums, observed trials and even orienteering events in addition to the main cross-country race, and one bike usually did it all.

Paul & grandfather Johnson at the Chequamegon 40 bike race

So I’ll share some of the family photo album with you. See the photo (you can click on it to enlarge it)? That’s me before the start of the 1988 Chequamegon 40 mountain bike race in Hayward, Wisconsin.

The distinguished gentleman standing to my left is my grandfather, Helmer “Blackie” Johnson. Helmer wasn’t much of a rider but he was a hell of a great bike racing fan.

Those are my two bikes, a yellow 1987 Diamond Back Arrival (on the car) and a black & yellow splatter paint 1988 Diamond Back Arrival.

These bikes were part of the first sponsorship deal I ever had, getting a subsidized price on the bikes and my race entry fees paid by Erik’s Bike Shop.
The bikes were stolen out of our garage a month or two after the photo with my grandfather was taken. Thirty years later, with a little luck and some help from Ebay, here is the replacement for the yellow bike. Couldn’t be happier. It’s just as much fun to ride as I remember.

1997 Klein Quantum Race

1997 Klein Quantum Race

The best example of Gary Klein’s impact on the cycling world is your reaction to this bike. You probably don’t consider this Klein Quantum Race road bike from 1997 all that special.

Now, transport yourself back to the 1980’s and take a look around. What do you see? Steel road bikes constructed in much the same way that they had been for the previous fifty years. New mountain bikes that were still reminiscent of their origins as ‘50’s era baloon-tire cruisers. Control cables and bearing areas attached to a bike’s exterior. No component integration. Everything was fairly heavy and most of the paint colors were fairly dull.

Big aluminum tubes

Shimano “600”

Shimano 600 calipers

As a young engineering graduate from M.I.T., Gary Klein took the bike world of the ‘80’s down a few different paths. Aluminum tubing in larger diameters led the way. Klein aluminum was typically 15% lighter than a similar steel frame tube and quite a bit stiffer. The welded aluminum joints could be positioned around unique frame geometry, not cut to fit into pre-cast steel lugs.

Bottom bracket bearings and headsets were next, housed within the large aluminum tubes, integrating elements that previously had been bike design afterthoughts.

Control cables for the brakes and the shifting were housed within Klein’s aluminum tubing as well, further cleaning up the bike’s appearance and protecting these wires from road grit and moisture.

Rear facing dropouts

Smooth tubing joints

2-tone paint

How about Klein paint? It was always a big feature with these bikes. Deep, rich colors that sparkled, single colors that faded into different ones, paint jobs that were completely different colors depending on your viewing relationship with the bike. It has been widely repeated that some Klein paints cost as much as $1800 per gallon.

All of these design elements were a boon to the bicycle shopper. Tall riders could get a stiff bicycle frame made out of aluminum that weighed significantly less than steel. Cyclists who were merely bored with the status quo found excitement with the latest Klein.

This particular bike is from 1997, a couple of years after Klein merged with Trek (Gary got Trek’s distribution network, Trek got Klein’s design elements). With another 20 years in the rear view mirror it’s startling to see just how normal Klein bicycle design has become.

1986 Centurion Ironman Dave Scott model

Centurion Ironman

Did we suddenly have more time for sports and leisure in the 1980’s? I don’t remember a huge difference from previous decades, but something must have changed. Mountain biking, wind surfing, roller-blading, racquetball, indoor aerobics and triathlon all seem to have sprung up (from really nowhere) during the decade.

Triathlon, a great sport for people who wanted to avoid spending time with their families, was also a great sport for the bike industry. In the early days, a company like Centurion could easily cater to the budding triathlete. Usually a bike brand would take one of their upper level road bikes, put a saddle on it that had a waterproof cover, maybe change the logo a bit or give it a pastel paint color and call it done.
Triathlon bike.

Little neon triangles. A perfect 1980’s logo

Profile tri-bar

Arm rests for a weary swimmer

Sometimes a triathlon bike came with a couple of features to improve aerodynamics. The ‘86 Bridgestone Mile 112 was the same bike as the 700 only it was pink instead of red and had aero brake levers.

Sometimes a tri bike was merely the model endorsed by a successful pro athlete. In the case of this Centurion we have the Hawaiian Ironman winner Dave Scott signature version.

The Dave Scott signature bike was a good road bike, don’t get me wrong. The Shimano 600EX component group had pieces that worked better than nearly every bike part ever built before them. The wheels were strong and light, the Tange steel frame was durable and precise, there just wasn’t anything super triathlon-y about it.

Shimano 600 EX with Biopace

Early (cheap) Look pedals

Dave Scott signature

Until you added the handlebar. The Profile aero bar added to this bike made it a tri bike. By affording the fatigued triathlete a place to rest their upper body after exiting the water and by reducing the frontal area of the cyclist, these goofy-looking handlebars made this bike fast.

The difference in speed between a standard road bike position and one involving this style of triathlon bar had to be at least 2 miles per hour. Since most triathlons in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s didn’t allow competitors to draft one another, the aerobar position (with the brake levers far away from the hands) posed only minor danger to the athlete.

Racing a bike in a speedo on the other hand…

1999 Bianchi Milano

Bianchi Milano

Sometimes old dogs can learn new tricks.

Bianchi is the oldest bicycle company that is still making bicycles today. They were founded in 1885, and being over a hundred years old, most people wouldn’t expect anything terribly innovative from them.

Bianchi surprised everyone in the 1990′s as they showed off a number of new tricks. With a half-dozen models that debuted between 1992 and 1999, Bianchi pushed the bicycle industry to try new things and reinvent itself in different ways.

A Bianchi PUSS (Pink Ugly Single Speed)

A surprisingly innovative company

There was the Bianchi Pista, which was really the only off-the-rack track bike available for nearly a decade. There was a Bianchi cyclocross frame and a complete cyclocross racing bike in an era when only obscure one-off imported versions were available. Bianchi made a commuter-style road bike in the late ’90′s called the Castro Valley that sported a single front chainring (the latest 1x drivetrain anyone?) and a generator-powered headlight. There was the Bianchi BOSS (Bitchin’ Orange Single-Speed) and its siblings; single-speed mountain bike framesets and complete bikes that were fun to ride, good looking, really light, readily available and quite affordable.

Integrated lights!

7-speed shifting and brakes in the hub

There was the Bianchi Milano. It made waves as a really cool “hybrid” bike. It was a utility bike so different and attractive that even the most snobbish bicycle racers wanted to ride one. Not only was the Milano a success for Bianchi, it was a suggestion for other bike brands to follow Bianchi onto radical new paths. Commuter bikes that looked fun. High-performance hybrids. Silly gimmicks (a saddle with integrated lights?) that weren’t all that silly.

Arc bars, fake leather grips

Café Racer

This Milano is from 1999 or 2000. The bike is built around a 7000-series aluminum frame (with either an arched top tube like this one or with the top tube inverted to make a low step-over frame) and a cromoly steel fork. There’s a Shimano Nexus 7-speed rear hub to handle the shifting and rear braking duties, cleaning up the lines of the bike and providing some extra foul-weather protection for what is still essentially a bike designed for utility. There’s a chain guard! Faux leather-wrapped foam grips! A sweeping arc handlebar that complimented the sweep of the top tube and rake of the fork.

Thanks to Bianchi and the success of the Milano, it is now possible to buy a carbon-fiber cruiser. Big bike brands now offer cyclocross bikes (and track bikes, and triathlon bikes, and snow bikes). People who love the technical aspect of bicycling can get good-looking high-performance bikes in all kinds of random usage niches.

1994 U.S. Cycling Team Time Trial Bike

1994 U.S. Cycling Team GT

This tall bike is a U.S. cycling national team bike. It is a time trial machine (also known as a “Funny Bike”) from 1994.

It may be hard to tell from the pictures but the wheels on this bike are different sizes. The idea was that the smaller front wheel helped the rider maintain a lower, more aerodynamic body position and in team events the smaller front wheel allowed the racer to stay closer within the draft of the rider in front. Dissimilar wheels sizes did have a couple of drawbacks, however. The team mechanic had to deal with an additional rim and tire size, and the rider had to deal with a bike that cornered a little funny.

Profile aero handlebars

True Temper steel aero frame tubing

United Airlines sponsored the Olympic program for years

This GT was built for a lanky national team rider, possibly Mariano Fredrick or George Hincapie.

The bike came at a technological crossroads for racing bikes. In the mid’90′s there was a lot of new knowledge about aerodynamics that was hard earned in the few low-speed wind tunnel facilities that were being used by bike companies. That knowledge was, unfortunately, held back in some instances by materials and construction techniques from earlier eras.

The last era for steel forks?

This design wasn’t very aerodynamic…

Curved this way and that

Airfoil tubing shapes probably helped somewhat with wind drag, but there are a dozen places on this bike where those tube edges funneled the air into areas (like the rear wheel) where the air would just be broken up again, creating extra drag.

Mavic components

Custom saddle

A few of the parts on this machine aren’t quite “correct” for 1994. Selle San Marco didn’t provide the National team with the custom embroidered saddles until 1995, and while Profile was a sponsor in ’94, this forward-position seatpost sat in a cupboard unused for years. We just thought that it added to the unusual look of the bike.

1988 Gianni Motta

1988 Gianni Motta

A Gianni Motta! A fantastic bike named after a great guy.
Gianni Motta was an Italian bike racer whose professional career ran from the middle 1960′s to 1976. Gianni Motta won the Giro di Lombardia, the Tour de Suisse, and the 1966 Giro d’Italia as the leader of the Molteni team (and I bet you’re surprised to know anyone besides Eddy Merckx ever won a race for Molteni). When Gianni retired from racing he started a bike company.
Gianni’s bike designs were inspired by the best of Italy’s frame builders. There is a shadow of Bianchi, Ugo De Rosa, Antonio Mondonico and Ernesto Colnago in a lot of the Motta bikes that we’ve seen, but Gianni always added something extra.

Funny model name

Gianni Motta head badge

Front end close up

Our friend Jeb Thornburg raced around on this bike back in his college days. This was a pretty sweet racing rig in the late ’80′s, and it just oozes Italian racing heritage. This a custom Gianni Motta “Personal 2001R”. The normally round frame tubing on this bike has been flattened into octagon shapes. The normally straight seat stays dive inward at the rear brake bridge. The brake cable shoots through the top tube. The semi-sloping fork crown holds onto pretty meaty fork legs, and like almost all steel Gianni Motta forks, this one is chrome.

Crimped tubing

Chorus drivetrain

Bent seatstays

Want to know something else about Gianni Motta? In the early ’80′s Motta sponsored the first American Team to enter a Grand Tour, the 1984 Giro d’Italia. The team was captained by U.S. Pro Champion John Eustice, and included a friend of the shop, Tim Rutledge. The pick for the team’s manager? Robin Morton.

Robin Morton, the team, Gianni Motta

Robin was not only the first American to manage a team at a grand tour, she was the first woman to ever do the job. The Linea Italia-Motta team wore American flag inspired jerseys and their Gianni Motta bikes sported a red, white & blue paint scheme. The team’s presence (even at the back of the race) turned heads.

1990 American M-16

1990 American Bicycle Manufacturing (ABM) M-16

American Bicycle Manufacturing was a brand that made beautiful, cutting-edge mountain bikes in St. Cloud, Minnesota from the early ‘80’s through the mid ‘90’s.

ABM was well known in the mountain bike world for coming up with novel ideas and then figuring out how to produce them. They manufactured polished and anodized aluminum bike frames at a time when painted steel was the norm. Their Montanaous model was one of the first modern-era bikes to have adjustable frame angles (change the head angle by changing the headset placement). The modern bike shop parts procurement nightmare, the replaceable derailleur hanger? American was really the first sizable company to incorporate the feature into every model. For a trade show in the early ‘90’s, ABM built a mountain bike frame out of super-light Beryllium tubing.

ODI Mushroom grips

Shiny aluminum

Deore XT Crankset

The 2 pound mountain bike frame never made it into real production as they really couldn’t produce frames out of the dangerously toxic metal for less than $25,000 each.
False starts and misteps aside, American Bicycle Manufacturing was ahead of the curve.

American was the original sponsor of the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival in nearby Hayward, Wisconson.  The festival today is one of the biggest and oldest off-road races in the world, drawing over 2500 participants into the woods each year.

Aluminum stem with brake cable roller

No suspension this model year

Outfitted with Shimano’s first off-road clipless pedal

Unfortunately, American Bicycle Manufacturing did not survive the mountain bike boom.  As a builder for other manufacturers as well as for their own brand, American sometimes lost market share and intellectual property to their own customers.   In 1993, a deal to produce tandems for Specialized fell through, leaving American with over 200 tandem frames they couldn’t sell.

American head badge

No nonsense design

Early Deore XT, replaceable derailleur hanger

This particular American M-16 features all of 1990’s best mountain bike bits. It has the Shimano Deore XT component group with 21 speed indexed shifting, the new 2-finger XT brake levers, round (and oval Biopace) black anodized chainrings, Shimano SPD pedals and black cantilever brakes… And a Hite Rite!
Do you have a dropper seatpost on your new mountain bike? This bike has the original.

Breeze & Angel Hite Rite

Specialized Ground Control tires

A Breeze & Angel Hite Rite seat adjuster is clamped around the Suntour XC seatpost. Just flip the quick release lever, let your weight push the saddle down and then re-tighten the quick release when you had the saddle at the right height. Just be carefull when you want the seat to go back up, the spring shoots the saddle back up pretty quickly…

1989 Giant Cadex 980 C

1989 Giant Cadex 980 C

Wow! Fantastic! A Giant carbon road bike from 1989!
1989 was a great year to be a cyclist (or a gear junkie). Ski-binding style pedals and the shoes that work with them had become a regular thing. Indexed shifting, gel saddles, synthetic-fabric cycling clothing and of course those new mountain bikes were all over the place.

In 1989, top-end bicycles were being produced with space-age materials. Titanium was around if you looked hard enough and aluminum was everywhere. Carbon fiber had been available for a couple of years, pioneered by TVT and Vitus of France, Colnago and Kestrel.
The problem was, those bikes were really expensive by 1989 standards. Walk into a bike shop back then and you’d find entry-level bikes at $300 and a Kestrel 4000 or a C Record equipped Colnago fetching around $1800!

Cadex front end

Vetta saddle, monostay

1989 was the year that carbon fiber road bikes became available to the masses. Specialized had the Allez Epic, Trek made the 2100 and Giant made the Cadex. Our friend Fred Williams walked into Mercer Island cycles in 1989 and rolled out with this Giant. He got quite a deal.

For around $1200, Fred got a pretty light and cool looking road bike with a Shimano 105 component group, a Vetta gel saddle, Look pedals and an Avocet 40 bike computer.

A chain hanger!

Early Shimano 105

The carbon construction method for these early bikes was pretty straight forward. Cut, mold and cure carbon fabric into round tubes.
Cut the tubing into the correct lengths and glue them in a tube-and-socket fashion into aluminum lugs (that you probably already had ready to go for your all-aluminum bikes). Clean and sand the excess glue, add a clear coat finish (by the way, you don’t want to cover the carbon with colored paint, people have to see the carbon weave) and you’re done!

Aluminum head tube lug

From Mercer Island Cyclery

We think that the price range (and the relative scarcity) of early carbon bikes is really what led to three decades of skepticism regarding the material. “Steel is real” and “Do you need carbon?” became article titles in the bicycle magazines not because of some epidemic of failing carbon products but because of jealousy. Call it a need to bolster the damaged egos that resulted when $800 steel Bridgestones got ignored at the club ride the moment a $1500 carbon bike showed up.

One more thing regarding carbon fiber and then we’ll be done. Since some folks love anecdotal evidence to support their beliefs, we’ll give them a new anecdote: This Giant Cadex is over 25 years and 30,000 miles old. It’s still looks and rides great. That steel Bridgestone? The top tube rusted through from sweat after the one winter it was used on the indoor trainer…

1995 Colnago Titanio

1995 Colnago Titanio

Check out this wonderful twin-downtube design from Colnago, the Bi-titan. The Bititan was sometimes labeled like this one here as the “Titanio”.

A big innovator throughout the decades, Ernesto Colnago really hit his stride in the early 1990′s.  New materials meant designs that wouldn’t work in steel could be revisited.  This titanium marvel features triangulated twin tubes running to the bottom bracket shell, and a diamond-shaped titanium top tube.  With the straight-bladed fork legs and edgy component choices, this Titanio is quite a break from the 100 years of traditional steel frame design that preceded it, and definitely different from the organic carbon shapes we see today.

Colnago popularized straight-bladed forks

Diamond-shape titanium top tube

Twin titanium downtubes

It’s too bad that we’ll probably never see racing bikes designed like this again.  Wait, what?  Why, if this bike is so cool, will we never see one like it again?

Because the UCI stinks.

Early ’90′s Dura-Ace equipment

Flight saddle and Synchros titanium post

The UCI, or Union Cycliste Internationale, is the governing body for the sport of bike racing.  In the late 1990′s, in order to exert more control over cycling (while ignoring the rampant blood doping in the pro peloton), the UCI created rules that restricted how a racing bike could be made.  Today, manufacturers like Colnago even have to submit their designs for inspection and an expensive UCI certification.

Cinelli Spinacci aero bars

These Mavic pedal bodies arced side to side, not the cleats.

Innovative ideas like the twin downtubes on this Titanio run afoul of the UCI’s rules.  Traditional front frame triangles were mandated .  No solid panels or airfoil shapes.  No split tubes.  No suspension on road bikes.  Wheels have to be the same size.  Heck, even neat little aero bars like these Cinelli Spinaccis were outlawed for use in mass-start events (maybe that was a good idea).

The Spinergy Rev-X wheels on this bike have an unusual status in bicycle history. They were one of the earliest bicycle wheels (besides discs) made of carbon fiber.

Spinergy Rev-X

They were a commercial success, and were followed into the marketplace by countless carbon-fiber wheel manufacturers. The unusual part is that while they were marketed as more aerodynamic and lighter weight than wire spoked wheels, they were actually neither. Few people bought these for their best attributes. While they looked flimsy and harsh riding, the Rev-X’s were actually pretty robust (as long as you didn’t crash) and rode with a great springy feel.

We hope you have enjoyed this tasty bit of eye-candy from Ernesto Colnago, the old UCI and the component companies of the 1990′s.

1994 Wilier Triestina

Wilier Triestina road bike

The mid ’90′s was an interesting time to be a racing bike.
You could be built up in the traditional ways, just like countless racing bikes before you. Assembled with shiny metal parts like your predecessors, but with rounded edges and aerodynamic shapes. You got unusual finishes, paint jobs that suggested you had the power of flight, patterns that tricked people into believing you made of different materials than you actually were. Just a decade previous you could have counted on the the same saddles, pedals or handlebars as your neighbors. In the 1990′s a racing bike never knew what to expect.

Wilier detail

Campagnolo Shamals

Record derailleur

This Wilier Triestina is from 1994. The frame was probably hanging on a hook as it was getting its colored-chrome finish just wondering what to expect.
What it got was a Campagnolo Record component group, just like hundreds of its ancestors. The difference was that these Campagnolo parts had no hard edges or corners, just smoothed and rounded aerodynamic shapes. The brakes didn’t actually stop the bike but at least the model was called the “Delta” which is usually used in scientific terms to at least suggest a change in speed.

“1994″ frame tubing

Etched head tube “badge”

Wilier aero fork crown

The fork was made from steel (going the traditional route) but the fork crown was shaped like something made from carbon fiber. It seemed like old-fashioned materials in new-fangled shapes was the route the bike was taking.
An aerodynamic water bottle in an aluminum cage.
Campagnolo Shamal aluminum rims polished like old touring wheels but with a futuristic deep aerodynamic shape.

Then came the saddle. A throwback to the 1960′s, a hard leather Brooks seat.
Next up was a full-length Silca frame pump (not one of those new mini-pumps).
Would toe clips and straps be another retro choice? Nope.
Look ski-binding style pedals in white and red.

Some of the ’90′s era racing bikes out there probably needed therapy.

1991 Slingshot Triathlon

1990 Slingshot

We have always wanted a Slingshot bike in the museum collection. Despite the somewhat silly appearance, these bikes are an important step in the evolution of modern bicycles and the design (and the company building them) is robust enough to still be available today.

Born in Grand Rapids Michigan in the early 1980′s, Slingshot was a hit with more open-minded bike riders and bicycle reviewers from sporting magazines.

The Slingshot design is all about giving the rider extra comfort and control without isolating them from the riding experience or creating inefficiency. The frames flex at the fiberglass “Dogbone” pivot and the coil spring at the top end of the steel cable helps return any lost energy in a controlled manner.

Cable Spring

Dogbone pivot

Cable Attachment

In the early ’90′s, this suspension system was a refreshing alternative to completely rigid bikes (especially stiffer-is-better aluminum offerings from companies like Klein and Cannondale). It was also better than a lot of the first-generation full-suspension attempts. Ironically, unlike Softride Beam bikes and some other longer-travel designs (like the Trek 9000), “Slingshots” would not catapult you out of the saddle when the suspension snapped back from a bump.

2nd generation Grip Shift

Scott Tri bars

Twenty-five years later, surviving Slingshot models are usually the more common off-road variety. This is a road version built for Triathlons.

Like modern tri-bikes, this one has a goofy-looking handlebar designed to support the forearms as well as providing control grips for operating the brakes and the shifters. This Scott triathlon bar was a valiant attempt to connect all of the contact points with one continuous piece of aluminum. It worked poorly and detracted from the rest of the bike. Since they were trying to make the bar light-weight and still connect all of the dots, the bar flexed quite a bit and made the steering sloppy. The brakes and the shifting were affected by this bar too. The extra-long cables required to snake around the bar bends reduced shifting precision, introduced extra friction to the cables and flex to the brakes.

Dura-Ace 7400

GripShift shifters make their first chronological appearance in our museum on this Slingshot. These are the second version that the company produced, and the first real commercial success. This version didn’t require mechanics to drill holes in the handlebars in order to install the shifters, the twisting action was a bit more precise than with the original product, and the shifters worked with a variety of bicycle and drivetrain styles.

Like a lot of tri-bikes in the ’90′s, this one was built with smaller than standard 650c wheels. The smaller wheels reduced stand over height and (hypothetically) increased aerodynamics. The smaller wheels were a bust when it came to performance, but they are a real plus for our museum bike here. The bike looks comically small in relation to other bikes on our walls, but with a 58cm top tube it was actually intended for a rider around six feet tall.

1996 National Team GT “Superbike”

1996 GT Superbike time trial

This is the road version “Superbike” from GT and the U.S. national team.  This bike and its three dozen siblings are the result of Project ’96, the U.S. cycling team’s million-dollar program to gain a technological advantage at the ’96 Olympic games and subsequent international competitions.

Project ’96 could have been modestly succesful had it been kept under wraps until the Atlanta Games, but building a “secret weapon” with Mavic, who also supplied the French cycling team, as well as sharing pictures with the cycling media a year in advance did not help the U.S. keep its technological edge.

A slippery profile to cut through the wind

Ahead of its time in the late 1990s

A big cut out for the rear wheel

Aerodynamic to the extreme, this decades-old bike is still on the cutting edge of technology, but actually can’t be raced.  It’s so fast it’s breakin’ the rules.

The UCI enacted several regulations in 2000 responding to the rapid advance of bicycle technology and the vast sums of money being spent by pro teams and national cycling federations to gain technological advantages. Uniformity and “traditional” bicycle design elements were the goals for the rules.

Custom saddles from Selle San Marco

That’s a big ring.

Cinelli Angel aerobars

In the case of the Superbike, the main issues are that the seat tube and down tube are too flat and run afoul of the regulations by not conforming to a 3:1 aspect ratio, and the wheels are different sizes (the rules now state that both wheels need to be the same size in order to be raced).

Aaron Olson at the 1999 Tour L’Avenir

Dave Zabriskie’s number

What does it mean for this bike to be “sponsor correct”? In the late ‘90’s it meant Shimano drivetrain components, Cinelli handlebars, custom San Marco saddles, Mavic wheels (our bike has a front wheel from Specialized instead of an aero wheel from Mavic like the IO or Cosmic) and frame tubing that comes from Reynolds.

The original fork that went with this frame was damaged during travel home from its last “real” race, the world championships in Treviso, Italy in 1999.  The bike is now retired, and merely has to look fast while it hangs out in the bike shop.

National team riders Dave Zabriskie, Aaron Olson, Danny Pate, Ryan Miller, Justin Spinelli, and Matt DeCanio have all raced this bike.

1998 Specialized Ground Control FSR Comp

1998 Ground Control FSR Comp in Mango

In 1998, the Specialized bicycle manufacturing corporation almost had full suspension mountain bikes figured out.

Almost.

This is the Ground Control FSR Comp model (in mango orange paint) from that year. It’s a model from the middle of their full suspension lineup, and would have set you back about $1600 in 1998.
The design elements on this bike shows how much Specialized had progressed in the 5 years that they had been working on dual suspension bikes, and illustrates just how far they had yet to go.

Judy T2 Long Travel

Rock Shox Coupe Deluxe

So the rear suspension design on this one is a four-bar linkage with a Rock Shox Coupe Deluxe spring unit controlling the action. I believe that at this point, Specialized was using a Horst rear pivot placement, just ahead of the rear axle, a design element that really helped to keep the suspension moving while the brakes were applied and not moving as much when the chain was being pulled by the pedals.

Up front there’s a Rock Shox “Long Travel” Judy T2 fork. The T2 sticker was a designation for bike shop mechanics more than anyone else that this was NOT a Judy fork with a damper cartridge that would leak and need to be replaced. And “Long Travel’, in case you were wondering, meant about three inches.

Ritchey ForceLite handlebar

Specialized “Strong Arm” cranks

Deore XT M739 derailleur

So the suspension elements worked as good as anything else out on the trails back then, and they would have been spectacular had Specialized gotten a handle on the frame geometry (like we know today). The problem was that the suspension made bikes like this one faster on the trails. If you’re hitting obstacles at a faster clip, it would be nice if your body position wasn’t super high and forward on the bike. It would also be nice if the steep front fork angles (which made the steering super quick) wasn’t connected to a long handlebar stem and narrow flat bars (that made the steering a bit trickier to control).

Kind of like a “Y” bike

Bottle storage problem solved.

Snarky critiques based on twenty years of hindsight aside, what else is neat about the bike? Well, there are a lot of cool parts.

Specialized made a front hub with a 9mm thick “Skraxle”, kind of like a modern thru-axle hub. There’s a good looking house brand crank. The bike sports a Deore XT M739 version rear derailleur, Avid brand V-brakes, Mavic X221 rims and it has great traction in the dirt with the fantastic Specialized Team Master and Team Control tires.

Check out the clever solution to the water bottle storage problem on the back of the seat tube. In that same area it’s amusing to note that you can’t just drop your seatpost all the way down on this bike without turning the rear suspension into a hardtail.

1998 U.S. National Cycling Team GT

1998 GT National Team Bike

This is one of the U.S. Cycling Team bikes from the late ‘90’s.

It was the “55 Spare” that spent most of it’s racing life riding on the top of a car, leaning against hotel walls, disassembled and cramped in airplane baggage compartments.

Such is the life of a spare bike. Travel all the way to Morocco for a stage race and never get pulled off the car in a panic. Ready to race the Triptique Ardennes only to have your front wheel tasting the cobblestones, secured onto a different bike. The Tour of Berlin? Train tracks crisscross the roads, the pavement greasy with diesel fuel, and the designated team leaders, Josh Thornton and Dave Zabriskie, are in the right height range to need your help. Berlin has to be your race! Alas, it was not to be as Seth Angevine was the only rider of six team members to make it through the race, and he was too tall for you to help!

At the office

At a race start

Always a bridesmaid and never a bride. Poor spare bike.

But you know, there was an upside to being a spare: you got the good parts. Spare bikes get a lot of attention on the roof of the team car, and since they sit out most of the races they’re always sparkly clean. They’re a great platform for a sponsor’s best stuff.

Teams like the National team get equipment budgets from their suppliers.  To equip a lot of riders, you need a lot of parts.  You had to find ways to stretch that budget.  With Shimano, for instance, if a premium Dura-Ace derailleur cost 10 dollars out of that budget, a lower level Ultegra derailleur may have only cost 5 bucks.

Dura-Ace 7700 STI levers

Ready to race

Shimano drivetrain

With a few smart picks you could save enough money in the budget to equip many more bikes.  Almost every team bike in the late ‘90’s had Ultegra brake calipers and front derailleurs in order to stretch the parts budget. Reynolds Ouzo Pro forks and Cinelli Grammo titanium stems made it onto only a handful of team bikes, usually spares like this one or onto the bikes of riders who knew how to sweet talk the mechanics and coaching staff.

Custom saddles

Reynolds 853 steel

Dura-Ace hubs

Team bikes like this one were built from Reynolds 853 steel tubing and outfitted with mostly Shimano Dura-Ace parts.   This bike got the threadless Reynolds Ouzo Pro fork instead of the standard GT Edge fork with the steel steerer tube.  It has the special race wheels (with tubular tires instead of clinchers) which help to tip the scales at only 17 pounds. Mavic Reflex rims and Wheelsmith spokes make up the wheels.  There’s a Chris King headset since Shimano only made threaded Dura-Ace headsets at the time.

Race notes on the stem, A Cateye Enduro computer on the bar

Time Equipe pedals

Dura-Ace calipers: An upgrade from stock.

This old spare bike has Time pedals, hopefully the right pedals for the medium-height racers (there was no pedal sponsor for the National team), a Cateye computer (power meters on race bikes were a rarity in the ‘90’s), crib notes on the stem marking the distance to feed zones and major climbs, and a number plate just like a real race bike…

1999 Hetchins Millennium

Built in honor of Hetchins' finest work

I know, this bike is confusing. The label seems to make it too new to belong in a museum, and the components and construction style would suggest that this is a really old bike. Seems like we’re trying to pull a fast one on you. We’ll try to explain.

The most similar analogy to this bike that we can think of is the retro-looking record players available now that have jacks to hook up to your iPhone. Or maybe it’s like an old car that got hot-rodded with a modern engine and suspension. Unlike a hot rod, this bike has the old engine and suspension but a new body. It’s a remake of a more “historic” bike, and a true classic itself. 

Oh no! My bike is melting!

Imagine how long it took to file and polish these

Built in 1999 to commemorate the new millennium, Hetchins offered bike junkies like our friend Jeff a chance to ride around on a piece of history by bringing back one of their oldest and most ornate lug sets. 
The steel tubing joining those lugs is thinner and lighter weight than what was used in the ’30′s, but the ride quality is similar.

Jeff commissioned this bike to be a replica of the Hetchins that star athlete Tony Merkens rode at the 1937 Crystal Palace six-day race.

Bicycle hub or cheese grater?

Head badge or a coat of arms?

Photos from the time suggest that his bike got more attention than Tony did. In an era when bicycle frames rarely had any identifying labels besides a head tube badge, the wavy tubing and the lacy lugs would have really stood out and been an eye magnet for people who liked high-performance bikes.

This Hetchins is pretty unique even today. It is one of 15 Millennium models that were built, and as far as we know, one of the two that were sold in North America.

1987 Cunningham Racer

1987 Cunningham Racer

A Cunningham mountain bike is a pretty rare thing, as only about 200 were ever made.  It’s a shame that more aren’t around, as these unique bikes ride beautifully and show off some real innovation from the early days of the sport.

This particular bike, a Cunningham Racer, would have set you back a mind-boggling $4200 in 1987, or about four times the price of a new Bridgestone MB-1.  Sure, a lot of money thirty years ago but if you had bought a Cunningham back then, today you could show up at a gravel-road race or mountain bike event and never pay for beer at the after party.

Dirt drop bar, custom fork

Roller-cam brakes, a Cunningham invention

Dirt drop bars with thumb shifter mounts

The designs that Charlie came up with for his bikes made mountain bikes what they are today.  One of the original Marin County mountain bike guys and an inductee in the Mountain Biking Hall of Fame, Charlie made his contributions to the sport as an idea guy.

Grease guard bearings could be maintained without removal

Sealed bottom bracket, mud guard for the brake

Cunningham custom post and quick release

He came up with iconic tire tread designs (Specialized Ground Control, WTB Velociraptor) that are still rolling down trails today.  Charlie built the earliest aluminum mountain bikes you’ll ever find, and designed them with sloping top tubes and reinforcement gussets years before anyone else figured out that those were smart frame elements.  Roller-cam brakes were Charlie’s idea, and they woke up the bike industry to the fact that cantilevers didn’t stop mountain bikes very well.  135mm rear hub width (which reduced wheel dish and spoke breakage)?  Charlie.  Grease Guard cartridge bearings that could be repacked with grease without removal?  Charlie.  Tubular (instead of flat plate) fork crowns?  Charlie.  Dirt drop handlebars?  Charlie.

There’s an interesting extra touch to this bike.  Take a look at the back side of the fork crown.  See the two bolts there?  They aren’t there for any type of brake.  We originally thought that those were there for a Cunningham idea that didn’t quite pan out: a steering damper of some type.  Before suspension forks, Cunningham and component maker Tioga both played around with dampers that would limit the amount your handlebars could turn, or just tamp down the jostling that you would feel at the handlebars.  We thought wrong.    It turns out that those bolts were there to secure a front rack that wrapped over the fork crown and away from the front brake.  A perfect storage solution for an era before Camelbak backpacks.

1998 GT STS DS

1998 GT STS DS

In the old days, bikes were easy.

Bike frames and forks were made out of steel tubing, you had “racing” or “touring” design, and you had maybe a half-dozen component groups to sort through.

This is not an easy bike.

This is an STS DS thermoplastic dual suspension bike from GT Bicycles. It was built in 1998, a time when bikes were made from all kinds of different materials, built for vastly different yet very specific types of riding, and outfitted with bike components that could come from a hundred different sources.

Thermoplastic, not carbon fiber

A lot of machining

Rock Shox Coupe Deluxe

Let’s start by talking about the frame (and handlebar) material. These areas were made out of thermoplastic. Thermoplastic is not the same as carbon fiber. With regular carbon fiber you use glue and pressure and sometimes heat to form it the way you want it, and you can’t really change the structure once it cures. With the kind of thermoplastic used here you can rely on heat more than mold pressure to shape things the way you want them, and if you get it wrong you’re able to heat things up and repeat the process.
Carbon fiber was still looked upon skeptically in 1998 (especially in mountain bikes) so malleable thermoplastic with its hypothetical repairability was an easier frame material to sell.

Rock Shox Judy XL

125 gram Scott thermoplastic handlebar

Ringle Twist skewer

The STS was pretty extreme for a cross country mountain bike in ’98. It had almost 3 inches of suspension travel and a pretty long wheelbase. The dual-crown Rock Shox Judy XL fork was pretty heavy by racing standards and was considered downhill-specific on looks alone. The seat tube was curved on this bike to make room for the rear shock linkage and Rock Shox Coupe Deluxe coil spring.

The cockpit features a long Kore stem and a narrow Scott thermoplastic handlebar. Like every other mountain bike ridden in the 1990′s this one has a pair of Onza bar-ends, grip shifters (X-Ray 800′s) and a colorful Ringle seat post.

GripShift X-Ray 800′s and Oury grips

San Marco-Bontrager saddle

Ringle red anodized “Moby” post

In the ’90′s there were a dozen different American bike component companies that offered cool CNC-machined anodized parts. All purple parts or a rainbow of colors was not uncommon. This bike got a minor red treatment. It has red Paul Components brakes, twist-off (not cam-actuated) Ringle hub skewers, a red Ringle seat post and bottle cage. The red-anodized theme could have gotten out of control with brake levers, hubs and cranks getting in on the craze, but the matte grey Shimano XTR parts put a stop to that.

Shimano M646 DX pedals

Shimano XTR 950 components

There are a few more notable bike bits to point out. The “Sunset” anodized Mavic 217 rims look great as do the gold and red spoke nipples. The Shimano DX pedals gave mountain bikers a bigger platform than Shimano’s cross country models, offering better support for softer shoes and a place to stand when your cleat wasn’t actually clicked in.
The Shimano XTR 950 drivetrain really was a benchmark for reliability and performance, but some of the parts were crazy expensive. This bike omitted the matching XTR shifters and brakes to an otherwise complete group. XTR trigger shifters worked great but were about three times the cost of the Gripshifters, a difference that usually explained the substitution and not an actual preference for twist-shift actuation.

Unusual Paul V-brakes

Red Paul Crosstop III brakes

Lastly, the brakes are fantastic. Here we have Paul Component’s linear pull variation called the Crosstop (III). They stop really well but were kind of hard to figure out when we were setting them up. There is an adjustable lever arm running across the top where the cable and V-brake noodle usually resides, and the cable stop and pinch bolt is down the side instead of on top of the brake arms. Just another thing about this bike that wasn’t so easy…

1987 Phoenix Bicycle

1987 Phoenix

If Wikipedia needs a photo for the definition of “Bicycle”, we’d be happy to let them use a picture of this Phoenix.
No matter where you happen to be on this planet, and no matter the year, bikes that look like this one are likely to be rolling down the street.

This Chinese Phoenix, which was built in 1987, is nearly identical to bicycles produced by dozens of different manufacturers over the decades. Raleigh probably built the great-grandfather to this rig back in the 1920′s. We have an Italian Bianchi just like it from 1940 and an Avon that was made in India during the 1960′s. The timeless design was obviously a winner.  Built to be really tough, fairly comfortable, easy to produce, and inexpensive to buy.
When organizations like World Bicycle Relief give bicycles to rural Africans, it’s bikes very similar to this Phoenix that are donated. If you were a visitor to Holland or Belgium, standing in a parking lot outside of a train station, you would see hundreds of bikes just like this one (and they would all be the same color).

All of the deluxe options

Rod brakes

Made in China, not Arizona.

The frame, built with a second top tube, is meant to be strong and provide stable handling even while carrying the heaviest loads. The fork has more rake to it than you’ll find on most bikes, a feature helps to smooth out the ride. Gravel roads and cobblestones are no match for the Phoenix.

Industrial strength kickstand

Here’s your suspension

While the Rod-actuated brakes are not the most powerful design, they are reliable. Leave the bike out in the rain for weeks at a time, you don’t have to worry about rusty brake cables. Hard rubber brake pads and big steel rods (instead of thin wires) are used so that the brakes, as mediocre as they are, rarely need adjustment.

You’ll find bikes like the Phoenix sometimes equipped with 3-speed hubs. Let’s call multiple gears a luxury (they need occasional maintenance) in this instance, so a single-speed will have to do.

Phoenix frame detail

Heavy duty rack

A ton of bricks

Now let’s talk cargo capacity. The industrial-strength rear rack and kickstand can handle some pretty heavy and unwieldy loads (certainly more weight than I would want to haul). We have used the Phoenix to pick up pizza on numerous occasions, and the rack was perfect for that. A couple hundred pounds of stuff should be no problem. School books? Groceries? Construction materials? 50 pound bags of rice? Two or three of your best friends and family perched on the bike? Bikes like this Phoenix laugh at cargo constraints. I’m guessing that you could handle the average Costco shopping cart load with little problem other than negotiating the parking lot.

1991 Alpinestars AL-Mega

1991 Alpinestars AL-Mega

What a crazy-looking old bike.
This Alpinestars is designed around one big frame tube, which made for a modern-looking machine (in 1991) that gave the rider a low stand-over height. Depending on the salesperson you talked to, this design was either stronger or much more flexible while traversing rough trails.
The Shimano Deore DX components worked pretty well. The new under-handlebar shifters were a little hard on your thumbs, but they worked all right. Gear options had recently expanded to 21 speeds (up from 18), and Bio-pace oval chainrings were thankfully replaced with round ones again by ’91. V-brakes were still a couple of years off at the time. The Deore cantilevers brakes on this bike required a skilled mechanic for proper set-up and really strong fingers to activate.

Oversized but still pretty small headset

Deore DX rear derailleur

These were tricky to set up.

In 1991, the shop where I worked had been selling mountain bikes (and I had been riding them) for roughly five years.
Five years seemed like forever to me then, and it certainly felt long enough to see some design trends and to form some insight into the way bike design was headed (or so I thought).
I thought for sure that bikes like the Nishiki Alien and this Alpinestars would be the way all mountain bikes would look in the future. Suspension hadn’t really become a thing in the mountain bike world yet, with suspension fork travel being only an inch or so and most suspension options adding a tremendous amount of extra weight.

Rapidfire shifters

The front triangle

I figured weird designs like this one would be the way forward. A common problem in the early ’90′s was having your chain jam between the crank and the frame chain stays. Designs like this one fixed that issue. Freed from the traditional diamond-shaped frame, bikes could be crafted with all kinds of different ride characteristics. New bike materials like carbon fiber, titanium and even aluminum would be all that we would ride in the future.
Funny thing is, 30 years after my first ride on a mountain bike I’m riding a pretty old-fashioned looking Ritchey that’s made out of steel tubing.

1989 Battaglin

1989 Battaglin

If Stephen Roche were 6’3″ tall, this could have been the bike he rode to victory in the 1987 Giro d’ Italia, World Championship and Tour de France.

This is a 62cm Battaglin, and it’s built pretty similarly to the bikes used by Roche’s Carrera racing team.  Battaglin bicycles are named after Giovanni Battaglin, the company founder and a fantastic bike racer from the 1970′s and early ’80′s. Like Stephen Roche, Giovanni Battaglin did a grand Tour double, winning both the Giro d’ Italia and the Vuelta Espana in 1981.

Fork detail

Campagnolo Record Delta brakes

Campy “C” Record drivetrain

The frame represents some fairly typical Italian design from the era. Columbus Thron steel tubing, while being a hair heavier than the more common SL or SLX tubing, made tall bikes like this one plenty stiff and reduced the front-end twisting that would have compromised the handling. The paint is fairly modest for an Italian bike, but there are lots of little engraved logos and custom touches abound.

Frame detail

Toe clips!

Record derailleur, custom dropouts

This bike is outfitted with all of the greatest hits of the 1980′s. It comes with Cinelli handlebars and stem, a Selle Italia Turbo saddle, Mavic rims, Campagnolo C Record components and… Toe clips!
Yes, the bike has Campy Record platform pedals with toe clips, from a time when some cyclists were skeptical about Look-style clipless pedals.

1990 Colnago Master Olympic

1990 Colnago Master Olympic

The Colnago Master was considered the premier Italian racing bike for over a decade.

Ernesto Colnago first released the Master in 1986.  It was a trendsetter.  His innovations included microfusion steel lugs and elaborate airbrushed paint jobs.  The diamond-shaped tubing in the Master began the bike industry-wide movement away from traditional round pipes.  Colnago also popularized the use of straight blade forks, which was way ahead of the curve (so to speak).

Campagnolo with Syncro indexed shifting

Campy’s second generation “click” shifting.

Diamond-shaped, not round tubing

This particular bike features parts from Campagnolo’s Chorus and Athena groups with Synchro indexed shifting, the second generation Look pedals, and the first ”anatomical” shaped handlebars made by Modolo.  The flashy paint job made it unmistakably a Colnago.

Fabulous airbrushed paint

Over ten years the Master was the bike chosen by classics specialists, sprinters, and tour riders alike on the toughest cycling teams.  The Panasonic team, Buckler, Russia’s Alfa Lum, Ariostea,  Lampre, Clas, Tonisteiner, WordPerfect (remember that team?), Mapei, Roland-Colnago, Superconfex, Rabobank, and Casino.   Some members of the Mapei team still picked the Master for rougher races as recently as 1999.

This beautiful bike is on loan from our friend (and local realtor) Jim Kennedy.

By the way, you can still get a new Colnago Master from Classic Cycle, and the steel fork is still an option.

1988 Shogun Prairie Breaker Team Issue

1988 Shogun Prairie Breaker Team Issue

Besides having historical significance as a great mass-produced late 1980′s Japanese mountain bike, this Shogun has to be noted for the name. The “Prairie Breaker” is probably the only mountain bike with a name that evokes images of flat farm land, not rocky mountain trails.
So that part of the name was an interesting choice. Plus I’m pretty sure that Shogun had no team to “issue” these machines.

Anyhow, here’s a slick bike from 1988. Built with quality Tange Prestige tubing and outfitted with Shimano’s Deore XT component group, this was a superb (if not a little predictable) bike that offered a good value and reliable off-road performance.

“Triple triangle” frame design

Shogun Prairie Breaker

With the seatstays connected forward of the seat tube juncture it would easy to think this is a rip-off of the more popular GT brand with their triple-triangle frame design. To that we’d have to say that GT was merely popularizing a frame style that has been around since the 1930′s.
Designing a bike with forward mounted seat stays is an easy way to stiffen up the rear end of the bike and add some pizzazz. The normal problems associated with this design had to do with rear brake interference, but Shimano’s chainstay mounted U-brake made those issues a moot point with this bike.
The Prairie Breaker was outfitted with all of the parts that made mountain bikes from this era awesome.

Biopace rings

Deore XT U-brake

Shimano’s Indexed shifting

There are the eliptical Biopace chainrings from Shimano. Big brake levers that have room for all of your fingers at the same time. Araya RM-20 rims. Shimano “click” shifting with 18 speeds. Flat and narrow Tange Prestige handlebars. Deore XT pedals with toe clips and straps. There was a quick release for the seat (you could add a Hite-Rite spring), Big blocky rubber grips, a bottom bracket with actual ball bearings and headset only 1″ in diameter. Good stuff.

Gavin O’Grady’s 1987 Cyclops

1987 Cyclops by Mike Mulholland

This speed machine was built by Mike Mulholland of Toronto, Ontario, in 1987.

In 1983, Mike bought Jocelyn Lovell’s business, Lovell Bikes, and Cyclops was born.  Mike became a world renowned frame builder and the go-to guy for many of the racers of the era, with his bikes ridden to win medals at many international level events.  Mike is an inductee in the Canadian cycling hall of fame for his contributions to the sport, and bikes like this time trial bike show off the artistry that went along with all of his hard work and generosity.

Mike Mulholland passed away in 2005.

Cyclops head tube badge

Built by Mike MulHolland

Mike built a few different bikes for professional rider Gavin O’Grady over the years.  Some of the bikes were rush jobs completed under extremely tight time constraints.  Gavin related a story of a Cannondale team bike that needed to be replaced before the start of the Olympic Games (as the large aluminum tubing ran afoul of the UCI’s rules at the time).  Mike answered the call and built Gavin a replacement road bike in less than 24 hours, start to finish.

Aero waterbottle

Forward facing seatpost

Gavin’s strength was his time trialing ability, and he put this time trial machine to good use.  This “Funny Bike” was pretty uncomfortable at the beginning.  The swoopy seat tube positioned Gavin way back over the rear wheel, and he was stretched to reach the handlebars.  A forward-bending seat post corrected this unusual geometry and made the bike rideable.
Interesting touches on this bike include rare Keywin pedals, Shimano Sante’ derailleurs, the internal fork wiring for the Avocet computer, and the pie-crust like seams that run along the sides of the tubing which probably (inadvertently) helped with aerodynamics by breaking up the boundary layer of air as it flowed around the frame.

Early clipless pedals

Shimano Sante derailleur

Modolo brakes. The noisiest!

Gavin and this bike won more time trials than we can list here.  Notable performances include the time trial stage and consequently the overall victories at the Chico stage race and the Tour of the Gila, as well as National Championship and Olympic Trials podium placings.

1999 Coker Monster Cruiser

Coker Monster Cruiser

You have a fat bike?  Big deal.

Here’s a Coker Monster bike.

Coker cruisers are built with 36″ wheels and sport a really, really long wheelbase.  Believe it or not, they’re easy to ride and fairly fast (on flat ground).

This particular Coker Monster Cruiser was part of Coker’s display at the Interbike trade show in 1998 or 1999.  It features paint details that are a bit reminiscent of an old Schwinn Hornet, while stock Monster Cruisers just come in solid paint schemes.

Let us know if you want your own super-sized rig and we’ll see if we can get you one.

Sunkyong Bicycle Mower

Sunkyong Cycle Mower

This thing seemed like a good idea to Hammacher-Schlemmer back in 1985.  The mail-order company known for esoteric and extravagant gadgets (anyone looking for gold-plated barbeque tongs or a personal submarine?) offered the SK Mower to lawn enthusiasts who were tired of breathing gas fumes as they mowed.

A pedal-powered lawn mower has been the dream of garage mechanics for a hundred years now.  Usually the idea would take the form of a reel-style push mower bolted to the front of a Schwinn Stingray.  The Sunkyong corporation decided to put some engineering into this idea and came up with the SK Mower.

Keep your fingers and toes away

The latest in drivetrain technology

Look out! It's sharp.

The cycle mower is ideal for homeowners with a ten foot by twenty foot perfectly flat yard.  No, I take that back.  It isn’t ideal for anyone.  Wet Seattle grass stops this bike in its tracks.  The gear ratio is so small that it would take Lance Armstrong four hours to mow a putting green.

Sunkyong review page 2

Sunkyong review

Check out the product review from a 1986 issue of Cyclist Magazine.

They found that the 3.8 inch gear ratio meant for a long day of mowing, as national team rider Thurlow Rogers spent the better part of a weekend trying to mow the Cyclist Magazine office lawn.

Gavin O’Grady’s 1986 Cyclops road bike

Gavin O’Grady’s 1986 Cyclops

Here’s one of the Cyclops road bikes that Mike Mulholland built for Gavin O’Grady.

A battle-scarred (but still pretty) Cyclops road machine.

The ingredients that went into building this bike were typical of pro racing machines from the era. The frame is constructed from Columbus SLX steel pipes, a tubing set that was reinforced with spiral steel strips running the inside length of the main tubes. The bulk of the components are from Shimano’s Dura-Ace 7400 group (the first Dura-Ace group that featured the new “indexed” click shifting).

Dura-Ace 7400 aero levers

Cyclops badge

Gavin’s race number at the Milk Race

Like every racing bike in the 1980′s this one had a Selle Italia Turbo saddle, and at one point or another it must have had Cinelli handlebars on it. Gavin’s racing wheels were built from Mavic GP4 tubular rims, Dura-Ace hubs, Wheelsmith spokes and Vittoria Corsa CX tires.

The man who built the bike, Mike Mulholland, was a (cycling) world-renowned craftsman and the go-to guy for lots of great racers in the 1980′s and ’90′s. Mike is an inductee in the Canadian cycling hall of fame for his generous support of athletes and skills as a bike builder.

Cyclops front end

The New Dura-Ace 7400

Racing in Sicily

Like the color of this bike? We think that the three-color fade showcases Mike’s skill as a painter too, an ability that is often overlooked (unless you’re Dario Pegoretti) in frame builders.

1991 Kestrel 200 SC

1991 Kestrel 200sc

Here’s a great bike that seems modern and cutting edge, but is actually over thirty years old.
During a decade (the 1990′s) that saw rapid advances in materials technology, Kestrel often led the way with their bicycles.
The 200 SC followed the ground-breaking Kestrel 4000 onto the scene with smooth futuristic style and solid ride quality.  Kestrel’s early frames weren’t the lightest around, but they handled well, they were strong, and they looked great.

Synchros quill stem

Kestrel EMS fork

Michelin Axial Pro tires

This particular bike features the Shimano Ultegra 6400 component group.  The 6400 groupset brought Shimano Total Integration shifting down to a more affordable price level than Dura-Ace.  The Ultegra brake calipers got a remake with the dual-pivot design, the front derailleur got a modern design,  and Shimano brought out their own Look clipless-style pedals.

First generation Ultegra STI levers

Ultegra 6400

San Marco Regal saddle

Other great vintage parts include the San Marco Regal saddle, the Modolo anatomic-bend handlebars, iconic green Michelin Axial Pro tires and an American made Synchros handlebar stem .

Huffy-Serotta 7-Eleven Team Track Bike

1987-1988 7-Eleven Huffy (Serotta) track bike

This track bike shows off the unusual complexity of running a professional bike racing team in the 1980′s.

First off, we have the sponsorship issue.  The 7-Eleven team had Huffy as their bike sponsor in 1987 and 1988.  Huffy didn’t supply the bikes, however, they supplied money to help run the team.  From a distance, the general public would assume that Huffy was making bicycles for Olympic level cyclists and that they could walk into a local K-Mart or Target and buy a similar bike off of the shelf.  Now if an avid cyclist took a look up close, he would notice the small Serotta decal and figure out that a pretty well-known custom frame builder named Ben Serotta was actually making the 7-Eleven team bikes.

One-bolt Dura-Ace stem

Tied and soldered spokes

Another peculiarity involves the type of bike that we have here.  This is an endurance-event track bike, not a road machine.  The 7-Eleven team primarily did their racing on the road.  When it came time for a big international track race like the World Championships or the Olympic Games, the coaches for the U.S. team would recruit the best cyclists they could find.  So what you probably had with this bike is a 7-Eleven rider (Mark Gorski? Dave Lettieri?) who was recruited to do the points race or the Madison at the World Championships.

Serotta… Not Huffy

Regal saddle, Dura-Ace post

Now, was it a pro or an amateur?  In the 1980′s you could only race at the Olympics if you were still an amateur.  7-Eleven had a feeder squad for a while that raced track and road events.  The members of this part of the team maintained their amateur status so they would be eligible to compete at the ’88 Olympics.  If you saw these guys at a U.S. race, they would look like the same cyclists that were on television at the Tour de France, the big difference was that they were racing the poverty line as well as other athletes.

So put it all together.  What did we have?  What we probably had was a professional road racer who was underpaid so he could maintain his amateur status, competing on the track while wearing a U.S. team jersey, not a 7-Eleven jersey, pedaling a Huffy bicycle that was actually made by Serotta.

1994 GT National Team Bike

1994 GT National Team Bike

The bike spent time on roof racks like this

This is one of the U.S. Cycling team bikes from the mid 1990s.  While Koichi Yamaguchi made some of the early team bikes (and some of the weirder track stuff), This was definitely from GT’s shop in Colorado. GT furnished the national team with all kinds of great bikes during the decade (most of them made in Longmont, Colorado), and this was my favorite.

GT's Triple triangle design and beat-up paint

Probably the last time anyone raced with a steel fork

Mavic parts, some bikes had Zap electronic

The bike is built out of really sweet-riding True Temper steel tubing, with great finishing details like the smooth fillet-brazed joints and the flashy patriotic paint job.

Mavic was the parts supplier those years, and you can see that the bike is still almost 100 percent “sponsor correct” for its time.  At some point the bars and stem were switched from Profile (sponsor 1994-1996) to Cinelli (sponsor 1997-2000), and we (the mechanics) bought seatposts from Excel Sports in Boulder when our supply of Mavic posts ran out.

San Marco made these cool custom saddles for us

Dave Zabriskie's number from Fleche du Sud

Apparently, this wheel went with Jonathan Page's bike

Because the national team is kind of fluid throughout the year, this bike was ridden by a number of different riders.  Rebecca Twigg used it on the road, as did Marissa VandeVelde (Christian’s sister), At some point the original fork was damaged in a crash, so I grabbed the fork off of Dirk Copeland’s old bike in the equipment room.  This bike hung out on the roof of the U23 mens team car in its later years, and was used as a spare by Kirk O’bee and Josh Thornton among  others.

Gavin O’Grady’s 1988 Cyclops track bike

1988 Cyclops Track Bike

Here’s a fast bike from the late ’80′s. Built by Toronto bike builder Mike Mulholland for our friend Gavin, this is a Cyclops track machine. An endurance-event design (as opposed to sprint event), it was best suited to riding kilos, pursuit races, points races and madisons.
Gavin was designed for none of these events. He liked the longer distances covered and familiar tactics involved while racing on the road, and because of those preferences his track bike was raced only a dozen times or so.

Dura-Ace 7600 track crank

High-flange hubs slotted for aero spokes

Built by Mike Mulholland

Racing pedigree aside, this is an impressive bike. The flat purple paint dresses up a rigid and robust frame made from True Temper steel tubing. The cranks and high-flange hubs are Shimano’s Dura-Ace 7600 track models. The Araya rims are laced up using 2mm wide bladed spokes, and we have 25-year-old Barum track tubulars sheltered inside of the tire covers. A lot of track bikes (even those built today) feature steel handlebars and stems. Steel is used to reduce bar flex while sprinting. Toe clips are used to prevent accidental cleat release during a hard effort. Design a bike for longer track events and you can use more comfortable (and convenient) road bars or clipless pedals…
This bike sports Cinelli aluminum road bars and Time Equipe road pedals.

True Temper frame tubing

San Marco Regal saddle

Tire covers over Barum sew-ups

Vintage track bikes always look great. Since they’re always raced in dry weather (and sometimes indoors) and on clean velodrome surfaces, old track bikes sometimes look like they’re brand new. This Cyclops is a perfect example.

Jeff Crowell’s 1993 Atala

1993 Atala road bike

The name Atala effortlessly evokes images of the Giro d’ Italia and old world bike racing.

One of most enduring Italian brands in the sport, Atala fielded a professional team almost continuously from 1908 until 1990.

Carlo Galetti and his Atala-sponsored team won the 1910, ’11 and ’12 Giri d’ Italia, and Atala-backed racers manage to win 43 stages of the Giro over its long history.

Columbus frame and fork tubing

Smooth looking Chorus equipment

8 speeds in the back

While Atala is a storied brand with great racing heritage, bikes that made it to this country were a mixed bag, quality-wise.  Our friend Jeff Crowell solved that problem by going right to the source.  On a college trip to Italy, Jeff had his dream bike built for him.  This Atala features Columbus SL tubing, a popular steel that guaranteed a smooth ride.  Campagnolo Chorus components compliment the Italian frame, as does the San Marco saddle, Italmanubri handlebars and stem.

Atala head badge

San Marco Regal saddle

World Champion Urs Freuler

The Campione del Mondo label on the frame is impressive.  A World Championship trophy every year between 1981 and 1988.  Would you believe that one rider is responsible for all of those?  Urs Freuler, a Swiss track racer on the Atala team for most of his career, won the world championship points race almost every year for a decade.

1994 Yeti Pro F.R.O.

1994 Yeti ARC

This was a pretty iconic ride back in the purple-anodized peak of the mid-’90′s mountain bike boom.  The Yeti Pro F.R.O.  For Racing Only.

Yetis like this one were used to crush all of the big races during mountain biking’s golden age.  Star riders like Missy Giove, Myles Rockwell, John Tomac, and Juli Furtado all rode for Yeti at one point or another.  This teal and yellow paint job was everywhere.

This isn’t one of our bikes.  It actually belongs to one of our upstairs neighbors who got this bike and a restored pink Manitou as wedding presents.  Pretty cool, huh?

The 1990′s came in anodized teal and purple

Flite saddle and Avid cantilevers

What else? Shimano Deore XT

Yeti Cycles was founded in 1985 by John Parker.  When Parker entered the bicycle world, he became one of the prime movers on the mountain bike scene.  Bike designer.  Team promoter.  Racer.  John even sat on the NORBA Board of Directors.

1986 Vitus 979 Durlinox

1986 Vitus 979 Durlinox

Whenever there are great leaps in technology, early steps (and missteps) are often ridiculed in hindsight.

Take the Vitus 979, a major departure in the ’80′s from traditional steel lugged framesets.  It was often derided for the same qualities that made it a such a giant technological step forward.

Vitus 979 framesets were made of small diameter 5086 aluminum tubing that was slip-fit onto aluminum sockets and then glued into place using a heat-activated type of epoxy.  This version from ’86 happens to feature an ovalized downtube, a fastback seat lug, and an internal brake cable run.

Aluminum is real, too.

Modern and sleek, not ornate

Shimano 600 Components

Bikes like this one were lighter, springier, and  in a lot of instances, more comfortable than what steel bike brands had to offer.  Bikes like this one were designed perfectly for riders under 5’9″ tall and/or weighed less than 175 pounds.  Big guys who rode a Vitus (or who lacked a smooth pedal stroke) were sorely disappointed.  Called their bikes “whippy” or “noodly”.

Clean and modern

Look’s cheapest pedal

Biopace chainrings

The reputation of early Vitus’ took a bit of a beating over the years  because the designers  failed to properly scale up the specifications of their bikes to fit the demands that larger riders put on their bikes.  People like me (5’7″, 135lbs) loved their Vitus.

I have an aside to share with anyone out there who sells bikes, reviews bikes, or reads internet message boards.  Phrases like “steel is heavy” or “carbon fiber damps road vibration” or “titanium is springy” makes about as much sense as saying “Aluminum is too stiff.”  If you don’t modify the preceding phrases with the words “This particular bike made of” then you’re just repeating nonsense.  Because let me tell you, this particular bike made of aluminum rides like butter.  Smooth and flexy to the extreme, the ride of an aluminum Vitus is an absolute pleasure.  Bigger diameter ”harsh riding” aluminum tubes may have been stiffer and more efficient at transfering power, but nothing beat the long distance ride quality of an Aluminum Vitus.

1989 Peugeot Tundra Express

1989 Peugeot Tundra Express

Just to clear up any confusion, not all of the bikes that we display in our museum are particularly valuable or special. This Peugeot Tundra Express certainly isn’t.

This bike is a pretty good time capsule, however. It is a good example of those new “Mountain Bikes” that everyone was talking about and buying in the 1980′s.

It’s a Peugeot, an old-world French brand more closely associated with the Tour de France, the Faema team and Eddy Merckx than riding in the dirt. Peugeot didn’t have much experience making off-road bikes in 1989, and this bike looks like it was built by Panasonic or Diamond Back for Peugeot.

“Oval Tech” chainrings

Light Action indexed shifting

As is typical for mid-level mountain bikes of this vintage, the components included Shimano’s new “Light Action” click shifting. With this low-level group you had indexed thumb shifters to manage your shifts and a small lever arm on the rear derailleur that permitted shifts without the chain moving (you had to pedal in order to complete the shift, however). Fantastic new technology and 18 whole gear choices!
Since this was a fairly modest model, the Tundra Express rider had to do without Shimano’s BioPace chainrings (which promised to smooth out the dead spots in your pedal stroke). Instead of BioPace this bike was spec’d with knock off “Oval Tech” rings.
Oval chainrings have gone in and out of fashion over the decades a number of times. Usually they show up on bikes around the time that other trends have been played out (aerodynamic tubing is so last season). The oval trend usually goes away after everyone is reminded of how goofy it feels to pedal with them or when riders get fed up with sloppy front shifting.

Cantilevers, not “U” brakes on this bike

Big motorcycle-style brake levers

The last thing that we’d like to note about this bike is the finish. Chrome, nickel plating, copper plating, and the tinted chrome of the Tundra Express aren’t seen very often anymore. These plated treatments work best for bikes made out of ferrous metal (no need to worry about rust with a carbon fiber or aluminum frame) and steel bikes are a fairly small minority in the bike world today. Since plating adds greater expense and weight to the finished bike than paint, not many modern bikes feature these bright and durable finishes.

1987 Trek 8000 XT

1987 Trek 8000XT mountain bike in camouflage

Oh, it was good to be a mountain biker in the ’80′s.

For instance, in 1987 you got to choose between camouflage and neon pink paint colors for your bike.  This was important, as you wanted the bike to look good with your matching Oakley sunglasses (that were big enough to cover your entire head).  In those days chainrings were oval, forks were curved and made out of steel, brake levers were huge, aluminum was considered “high-tech”, and nobody gave you a hard time if you used the word “rad” in a sentence.

ODI Mushroom grips, Avocet 20 bike computer

A Hite-Rite allowed you to adjust your saddle on the go

Shimano's Indexed shifting and Biopace chainrings seemed miraculous

Trek had a good time in the ’80′s too.  They turned out radical machines like this 8000XT mountain bike, and riders lined up in their acid-washed denim to be the first to get one.

1992 Trek 5500 OCLV

1992 was the year that Trek introduced their OCLV carbon fiber bikes to the cycling world. 

1992 Trek 5500, the start of a winning streak

OCLV stood for Optimum Compaction, Low Void.  The label was more than marketing hype.  Trek used high grade carbon material and well engineered tooling to mold each lug and tube individually.  By using this method instead of trying to create an entire bike frame in a single shot, Trek’s engineers were able to reduce the amount of epoxy and fillers left over in the completed frame.  The carbon molds squeezed the tubes extremely tight, reducing the size and number of “voids”, and leaving them with “optimum compaction” of the material.  This patented “OCLV” method is still used today by Trek and the aerospace companies that license their process.

Optimum Compaction, Low Void carbon fiber

Campagnolo's Record group and Look pedals

It's not one piece, those are tubes and lugs

Delta brakes, Treks emblem from the '90's

This bike probably looks like any other that you would see in the shop today, but remember that carbon fiber pioneers like Trek, Kestrel, Look, and Colnago were flying by the seat of their pants thirty years ago.  Some of the bikes they came up with were radically different at the time, and some have stood the test of time.

This wonderful piece of cycling history was originally owned by our friend Michael Powers of Summit, New Jersey.  This baby is not stock.  Michael spared no expense while building this bike, opting for Campagnolo’s swoopy and aerodynamic looking Record component group, Look “Carbon Arc” pedals, and Modolo’s anatomic handlebar.

Horsecycle

Giddy-up!

A friend of ours named Bill Scarvie brought this awesome recumbent into the bike shop a while back.  His wife had owned a toy store (or was it a tack shop?) and this was one of their big sellers.

This recumbent has it all.  A full one horsepower engine.  An enclosed chain guard to keep your chaps free of oil.  Rein and pinion steering.  A custom saddle.  Brakes to help hold your horses. 

Whoa, Nelly.

Stevenson Demountable

1986 Stevenson Demountable travel bike

Before there were S & S couplings or Ritchey Breakaway travel bikes, there was the Herse Demountable.

This demountable is made by Bill Stevenson, a talented and experienced bike builder from Olympia, Washington.  Over the years, Bill has designed and built frames for Gary Fisher, worked as a designer and quality control inspector for Ross Bicycles and Alpinestars USA.  Bill apprenticed with Albert Eisentraut in the early seventies and built his “Limited” series of bikes.

This bike is based on a Rene’ Herse design from the early 1970s.

Lugs that melt into the tubes

Inventive and strong frame coupling

While the travel bike was built in 1986, it was years in the making.  It languished in Bill’s shop raw for a number of years before he gave it to Jeff.  The painter Jeff chose to finish the bike claimed to have “Painters Block” and let the frameset sit on a shelf for over six years.  Coming up with just the right mix of parts was quite a task itself. The bike was finally finished in 2007 and is now in regular rotation in Jeff’s fleet.

Seat tube shifters and lots of quick releases

Even the saddle is adjustable

There is a great mix of engineering and artistry evident in this Stevenson.  Shifters on the seat tube avoid problems when the frame tubes are taken apart.  The bike has a Stevenson stem that is beautiful and functional.  Check out the smooth fillet brazed lugs on the bike, the head tube lug just melts into the top tube…

About our museum…

The bikes featured in this museum section are privately owned by Paul Johnson and Jeff Groman, as well as other employees and friends of Classic Cycle.  We display them in this space to share their beauty and showcase the skill and creativity that went into making them.

This website is not intended to be a research archive.  While we like to be accurate in our descriptions, we don’t really care if a particular bike was made in 1952 or if it was 1953.  A bike built today could be labeled a 2022 or 2023 model.  It could be exactly the same as a 2019 model, and may not get sold until 2024.  In 50 years it would be really nice if folks just went out for a bike ride and didn’t bicker over the exact vintage of their classic bike.  In other words, if you’re really concerned about manufacturing dates and serial numbers, good for you. Just keep it to yourself.

To the serious bike collectors out there:  We don’t care if the saddle on our 1972 Colnago isn’t “period correct.”  Enjoy looking at the collection or don’t.  Plenty of brand new bikes roll out the doors of modern bike shops sporting saddles or bottle cages that were new during the Clinton administration.

Likewise, this museum section is meant to be interesting and entertaining, and we would never let the facts get in the way of a good story.