Very cool. Do you old timers ever wonder what happened to those frames? I'd like to think they didn't collect dust...... Before they became collectable...... to collect dust.
The only one I am interested in is my personal bike... a single speed I built there in 1996. There's a forum member who owns it now, but he won't sell it back to me! :madman:
I am not sure how JW ended up with it, but I had traded it to a fiend in Santa Cruz for another bike a few weeks before I moved to Seattle.
Bontrager frames were very good / fast handling bikes, but a bit too short and steep for my tastes. I always felt like I was going to go over the bars on my stock Race and Race Lite bikes. In fact, I think I did go over the bars more on those bikes than any other bike I had previously owned.
I custom built this one around a size "large" seat tube, but with a 72* seat tube angle instead of the stock 74* seat tube angle. I also stretched the top tube out to 24" from 23", lengthened the head tube to 5.2" (I think) and steepened the head tube angle from 71.5* to 72*
It was a very balanced and sharp handling bike. In fact, I liked it so much that all my bikes (hardtails) since then have shared this geo. I don't ride hardtails anymore, but I am tempted to build another one with a slightly longer TT and slacken the HTA to a more fashion forward 68-69*.
Ya she worked at Sportworks for a while, had her own shop until manufacturing crashed around here then retrained to be a scrub tech. Now doing hip and knee replacement surgeries.
Instead of Kirk building Himself a replica, why not build a replica and make a swap with GrumpyOne for the original? That'd be a win/win situation for both parties I would think.(?)
What's to understand? Just another way of doing it... Fwiw, I don't care for the aesthetic, but it makes a ton of sense for production bikes. Much more efficient to build wishbone sub-assemblies, than cutting left and right seatstays.
We had a baby blue, white and orange Bontrager come through the shop this last summer. It was all original and in great shape. He rides it a lot and takes care of it. I asked the guy if he would sell it and there was no way! Those things are just too perfect to let go.
This thread brings back great memories I bought a Bontrager OR in 1994 and rode that bike until 2002 when I sadly ripped the derailleur hanger off. It was purple with white and silver decals.
I'm constantly on the lookout for a Bontrager RaceLite to replace the one I foolishly sold many moons ago. I've thought about having a replica made because like Kirk, the original geo was a little short in the top tube for me.
Ultimately I decided to go with a Sycip as I've wanted one of those for a long time. And while a Neo-trager would be cool, it still wouldn't be a Bontrager.
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