Serotta 1992 catalogue

From this series i have the T-Max.
I have not posted any pictures of this one on this Blog, i will have to make some soon.
Also the Colorado Tri is form 1992, even with the same shown earospoke wheels

Nuke Proof cataloque 1997

It's been a few weeks since my latest post, I have been busy with other nice things ;)
in 1997 nuke proof introduced the Reactor, with the special headset, 2 different sizes top and bottom.

the first Fat Chance Titanium

Here is an article from 1986 about Chris Chance and his Fat Chance titanium,......he was much earlier then most of us would think!

Serotta 1995 catalogue

from the year my TiMax was built

the Top 10 MIMTBE: Number 8 -> Bontrager

In 1978 Bontrager became attracted to cycling and in 1979 built his first road bike. With his motocross background he was attracted to mountain bike cycling. In 1980 he built his first mountain bike frame and founded Bontrager Cycles in Sunnyvale, California.
In 1984 he cut 700C (ISO 622) 40-hole Mavic MA-2 tandem rims to the circumference of a 26" rim, re-rolling them to create a 32-hole 26" rim.
Bontrager rims were the first lightweight yet strong mountain bike rims, albeit using a profile intended for road racing bicycles. Mavic provided MA-40 MTB rims for some time. Bontrager went on designing lightweight rims, manufactured by Weinmann USA. Several were introduced but never went into high production as the Weinmann plant suffered a fire.
The design of Bontrager frames was based on his studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and experience as a motocross mechanic. While other manufacturers developed frames out of (oversized) aluminium, titanium, or carbon-fibre, Bontrager's believed steel was not outdated but that its design and production could be improved. Joints could be strengthened by gussets to distribute loads and reduce the weakening of brazing and welding.
He found areas in which joints could be made by bonding and riveting, i.e. the frames made between 1989 and 1994 had cable stops milled out of Aluminum that were bonded and riveted to the top tube. Frames made at Bontrager's Santa Cruz workshop had two-piece seat stays made of larger diameter tubing in the upper area which added torsional stiffness around the brake-bosses, while the smaller tubes in the lower area reduced weight and vertical stiffness of the rear triangle leading to better damping of hits.
Bontrager published articles on bicycle design and construction, ranging from the effects of TIG welding on the tubes to the flaws in the accepted sizing methods of the day.
In 1987 he designed and patented the composite fork crown. This used an aluminum fork crown that clamped the fork blades and the steerer instead of using welds or brazing. This design was used on the Rock Shox RS1 suspension fork, and Bontrager's own rigid fork, the Switchblade.
Bontrager's belief in avoiding heat affection of the tubes led to versions of the Switchblade with bonded and riveted dropouts and brake bosses leading to a fork with no welding or brazing. This retained the strength gained by tempering the tubing.
In 1992 Bontrager Cycles expanded from a one-man shop to a limited production facility. In 1993 they started to produce handlebar stems. In 1995 Bontrager's business partner, Hans Heim, left to join Santa Cruz Cycles, and put his share of Bontrager Cycles up for sale. Trek acquired Bontrager Cycles and hired Bontrager as president.

The current BONTRAGER company can be found here: BONTRAGER COMPONENTS




The top 10 -> MIMTBE

Elephant parade

The last couple of weeks Elephants took over Amsterdam.
112 Elephants were placed throughout the city and this morning i drove through the Westerpark and saw all the elephants in 1 spot,...

ELEPHANT PARADE AMSTERDAM
5 september - 31 oktober 2009
From September onwards, a hundred full size art elephants will swarm the streets of Amsterdam: together, they form a remarkable open-air exhibition, the Elephant Parade, that is dedicated to the Asian elephant. After the successful editions in Rotterdam and Antwerp, the exhibition in Amsterdam will be the largest so far.

The Elephant Parade is founded by father and son Mike and Marc Spits. With their project, they aim to raise attention for the Asian elephant, that is threatened with extinction. Their project has proven to be succesful: the first two editions of the Elephant Parade, held in Rotterdam and Antwerp, raised a total amount of over 700,000 euro. The benefits of the Elephant Parade are donated to the Elephant Family, the largest elephant charity in the world and was founded in 2002 by Mark Shand. He is a globetrotter, philantropist and writer and maker of the BBC documentary Queen of the Elephants.

Especially for the Elephant Parade Amsterdam, a tour is set out that will lead you along all the elephants that are located at several hotspots in the Amsterdam city centre: Museum Square, Spui, Westermarkt, Koningsplein, Kalvertoren…

Many celebrities are supporting this project and are designing an elephant for the parade

Elephant Parade

1992 Downhill world championships

just a cool clip from 1992; downhill,...fast! and these guys use canti brakes,..

the Top 10 MIMTBE: Number 9 -> Mountain Cycle San Andreas

again i want to mention,..this is a fictive top 10,..based on a list made some time ago in the BIKE magazine.
This top 10 is not in a particular order,..just a top 10

so here is number 9 -> The Mountain cycle San Andreas.....



In the late eighties Robert Reisinger, A engineering student at Cal Poly State University, knew there had to be a better way.
Robert was taking a beating riding his fully rigid mountain bike around San Luis Obispo. Drawing on his experience as a motorcross racer and Team Kawasaki R&D grunt, Robert created the first inverted mountain bike fork (The Suspenders)



The original fork had superior rigidity and about 2 inches of travel. Many of today’s current forks are based on this original Mountain Cycle design.

In 2000, Robert, along with four others, received an award from Mountain Bike magazine for contributions to the Bicycle industry. This award was the Mountain Bike 15th year Anniversary Award for the “Most Significant Product” in Mountain Biking.

The ProStop Disc Brake speaks for itself, after years of uphill battle in which Mountain Cycle/ProStop was not only the leader, but the founder of this technology, the disc brake has found a home in the cycling industry. A good case could be made that many present day companies would not exist in the form they do, without the influence of ProStop.

In 1991, Mountain Cycle introduced the San Andreas, the first production monocoque in the bicycle industry. A revolution ensued. A look around at today’s bicycles shows that there are few companies that have escaped the design influence of Robert Reisinger and Mountain Cycle. Monocoque frames abound. The movable sub frame, a Mountain Cycle innovation is one of the most copied features in the industry.

The sub frame was introduced by Mountain Cycle on the San Andreas in 1991 and it was 4 years before it started showing up on competitor’s bikes, now this feature is everywhere. This innovation alone is worth the price of his admission to the Hall of Fame, both as an innovative way to size a frame and as a beneficial solution to production issue.

The ShockWave DH frame was one of the first 8-inch travel frames on the market. Taking monocoque technology to a new level, it introduced an integrated chainguide, a detachable BashGuard (still the only one in the industry), replaceable dropouts and the steerer stop on the front end. This steerer stop is another masterful innovation. With the advent of triple crown forks, many frames incur damage in the area behind the head tube. The steerer stop ends this issue. Integrated into the frame and with a detachable donut type device with rubber ring, it’s simple, elegant, and effective.

Mountain Cycle was the first and is still the only company in the bicycle industry to produce a complete line of monocoque frames. With the introduction of it’s new, 2001, Tremor FR-1 it keeps this tradition going.

Mountain cycle still makes the best of the best and can be found here: Mountaincycle San Andreas

The top 10 -> MIMTBE

my Serotta TiMax now ready to be used

Because i want to use this bike instead of just a display garage queen in my livingroom i took the White Onza Porc's of and put some NOS Tioga Psycho Kevlar tyres on.
Now it is ready for the beating!
Hope to make the first tour later this week.

To be honest,..these tyres look better than the white Onza's,..

the Top 10 MIMTBE: Number 10-> AMP Research

The AMP research "Design" bikes.

In 1991 Horst Leitner's primarily Motorcycle-based company, AMP RESEARCH, turned its attention to the challenge of creating a full suspension mountain bike. At that time, front suspension was in it;s infancy, suspendion stems were hot commodities, and rear suspension was something that generally sucked the will to live clean out of anyone hapless enough to ride.
One of Leitners employees, Karl Nicolai (now owner of Nicolai bikes : www.nicolai.net) , designed a four-bar suspension- with a pivot behind the bottom bracket and another on the chainstay just in front of and often below rear axle-that rode efficiently and was generally undisturbed by pedal or brakes forces.
(Something i hated with my old S-Bike, that shifted when i rode hard)
The new AMP design four-bar, dubbed thereafter the "HORST LINK", came to be known as the first really effective rear suspension for mountainbikes.
Amazingly, the HORST LINK became populair in spite of the incredible fragility of the bikes using thedesign. The early AMP bikes, and the MONGOOSE rigs that licensed the design , were very light and notoriously underbuilt. Still, the design showed enough promise for Specialized to adopt it for its FSR line. It also showed up on GT's LTS bikes and a host of other brands, gaining widespread acceptance all the way up to 1998 when Specialized purchased the rights to the AMP patent, and began aggressively defending it's use.

(Source ; BIKE magazine)