For everyone else who wants to know, I’ll try to explain. 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. Traditional front frame triangles were mandated . This version from ’86 happens to feature an ovalized downtube, a fastback seat lug, and an internal brake cable run. 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?) 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. Groceries? The bike came at a technological crossroads for racing bikes. 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. During his most productive years Charlie designed and built a few road bikes and five or six cyclocross machines. 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. The 1990′s came in anodized teal and purple. Take photos like you would if you were going to sell it. Before there were S & S couplings or Ritchey Breakaway travel bikes, there was the Herse Demountable. The Bridgestone MB-1 from 1989. 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. A 1994 Trek 9800 mountain bike in Ice Green. Bikes that were sold in large numbers could fall into one of two camps. The bikes featured in this museum section are privately owned by Jeff Groman and Paul Johnson, as well as other employees and friends of Classic Cycle. Bike designer. Highlights include Shimano’s first edition XTR mountain bike component group. The bikes were stolen out of our garage a month or two after the photo with my grandfather was taken. With another 20 years in the rear view mirror it’s startling to see just how normal Klein bicycle design has become. Yet. Here’s a great bike that seems modern and cutting edge, but is actually over twenty years old. 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. 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. 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 is a road version built for Triathlons. Seems like we’re trying to pull a fast one on you. 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. 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. 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. Riding around the Port Gamble trails, we didn’t miss modern frame design (or even a dropper post) one bit. Specialized Rockhopper. 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. And “Long Travel’, in case you were wondering, meant about three inches. 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. It took a few years before mountain bikes were available to fit anyone shorter than about 5’ tall. 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). Berlin has to be your race! Clean the bike, remove any broken or rough-looking accessories and put some air in the tires. The glued socket construction method meant that there was an inch of overlapping material at every frame joint. So there’s nothing super special about this bike. The brake calipers from this component group are amazing. Coker cruisers are built with 36″ wheels and sport a really, really long wheelbase. The team’s presence (even at the back of the race) turned heads. 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. Imagine getting rid of your dropper post and installing a rigid IRD (Interlock Racing Designs) seatpost like we have on George’s bike. 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. 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. You probably don’t consider this Klein Quantum Race road bike from 1997 all that special. 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. No pedal-induced bobbing, predictable behavior and a pretty light bike. If you were fast, you raced. The normally round frame tubing on this bike has been flattened into octagon shapes. A thirty year old mountain bike. Four stars. This bike is also outfitted with the original Shimano off-road clipless pedal, the M-737. They worked great then and they still do. So I’ll share some of the family photo album with you. We reconfigured the bike to be a better representative of the Panasonic custom program. 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. If you have a one-of-a-kind bicycle, it may mean that no one has ever heard of it and/or nobody is looking for one. For a trade show in the early ‘90’s, ABM built a mountain bike frame out of super-light Beryllium tubing. In 1987, Panasonic launched PICS, their Individual Custom System. A lot of track bikes (even those built today) feature steel handlebars and stems. Despite the toy-store colors in the paint scheme this was once considered the most bad-ass racing bike in the pro peloton. 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. It was often derided for the same qualities that made it a such a giant technological step forward. A Breeze & Angel Hite Rite seat adjuster is clamped around the Suntour XC seatpost. 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. JavaScript is disabled. These aerodynamic wheels were fast. Of course, seeing as how Specialized stopped making these models in 1995, a fat lot of good my review will do anyone now. Oh, sorry. At least, it’s fun to see the industry return a bit to where things started. Tough, reasonably light, and cool looking. The year is 1986. You could ride one of these bikes for hours and hours. In 1989, top-end bicycles were being produced with space-age materials. Unresolved: Release in which this issue/RFE will be addressed. The Panasonic team, Buckler, Russia’s Alfa Lum, Ariostea,  Lampre, Clas, Tonisteiner, WordPerfect (remember that team? It’s still looks and rides great. Shifters on the seat tube avoid problems when the frame tubes are taken apart. I’m guessing that you could handle the average Costco shopping cart load with little problem other than negotiating the parking lot. They manufactured polished and anodized aluminum bike frames at a time when painted steel was the norm. Any European brand that decided they should try making an off-road bike model. 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. ), 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. If you weren’t fast (or simply couldn’t be pryed off of your bike between motos), you tried freestyle. In the 1990′s a racing bike never knew what to expect. Fantastic! A pedal-powered lawn mower has been the dream of garage mechanics for a hundred years now. Shimano “click” shifting with 18 speeds. The 1986 Haro Master freestyle in team Haro green. OCLV stood for Optimum Compaction, Low Void. There’s a time trial bike that looks like it’s made from melted wax. Charity fundraiser bike rides took place every summer weekend. Wait, what? No toe clips? Brakes to help hold your horses. That steel Bridgestone? 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. Some of the ’90′s era racing bikes out there probably needed therapy. Carbon fiber racing bikes were purchased for daily commuting just like sports cars were for the same task. This is from 1990 so of course it’s a hardtail with 26” wheels with 2” wide tires. Steel is used to reduce bar flex while sprinting. Who says that boys can’t ride pink bikes? S-works Epic with the (Evo) SID 120mm fork. Don’t call us and try to describe it over the phone. If you were a bike racing fan in the 1980’s, you probably thought that this was the coolest bike you had ever seen. 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. The derailleurs? Our museum bike here is based on a frame from 1990 but it has been built up with slightly more modern components. Dirt drop handlebars? Two or three of your best friends and family perched on the bike? 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. 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. It’s so fast it’s breakin’ the rules. Cyclocross was the smallest niche in a niche sport. Our own athletes (and mechanics, and soigneurs) were iritated by the press coverage. 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. 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. True, our friend Jay Elhardt built this bike for his wife to ride, but it isn’t necessarily a girls bike. Back in 1988, there was hardly any of this nuance. They were one of the earliest bicycle wheels (besides discs) made of carbon fiber. I have an aside to share with anyone out there who sells bikes, reviews bikes, or reads internet message boards. 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. Some of the bikes they came up with were radically different at the time, and some have stood the test of time. Sometimes we have to figure out really ancient or just esoteric components without the help of a repair manual. Titanium was around if you looked hard enough and aluminum was everywhere. Triathlon, a great sport for people who wanted to avoid spending time with their families, was also a great sport for the bike industry. It is arguably the coolest thing that Trek, a midwestern company with a reputation for generating some fairly dull bikes, has ever made. 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. Colnago popularized straight-bladed forks. This Merckx is outfitted with the Campagnolo’s 2nd tier Croce d ‘Aune group. 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. *pics*, 2003 Specialized Epic headset loose, need some help. That’s a pretty long time… Is it any fun? 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. In 1994 Trek was just scrambling to catch up with their competition in the mountain bike market. 20. Clearly a labor of love for all things awesome in the 1990’s, this bike has been upgraded to perfection. 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. As is typical for mid-level mountain bikes of this vintage, the components included Shimano’s new “Light Action” click shifting. Take a look at the back side of the fork crown. That’s what our friend Chris Lyons thought when he saw this Trek Y-33 at Frank’s Fix-it shop in Aberdeen. Most likely they’ll have smooth tires and a cargo rack, doing commuter duty in the rain, but they’re still rolling. Suntour XC pedals and seatpost rounded out the component roster. 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! Poor spare bike. Everything was fairly heavy and most of the paint colors were fairly dull. The cycle mower is ideal for homeowners with a ten foot by twenty foot perfectly flat yard. A Gianni Motta! So paint job aside, the frame is awesome. The saddle here is Greg’s preferred San Marco Regal, in this case the weird version with the square cast aluminum seat rails. 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. The housing stopped on the top of the derailleur and slid across a grooved plate (much like today’s Sram derailleurs). 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. 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. On a college trip to Italy, Jeff had his dream bike built for him. Plus they’re neon yellow. The “Prairie Breaker” is probably the only mountain bike with a name that evokes images of flat farm land, not rocky mountain trails. Believe it or not, they’re easy to ride and fairly fast (on flat ground). For Racing Only. American Bicycle Manufacturing (ABM) of St. The problem was that the suspension made bikes like this one faster on the trails. This is the Ground Control FSR Comp model (in mango orange paint) from that year. MB-0 and cycling icon Gene-O, a fast combination, The Bridgestone catalogue is museum-worthy itself. 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. 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. The parts show off some other great fads and innovations from the era. American Bicycle Manufacturing was a brand that made beautiful, cutting-edge mountain bikes in St. That’s me before the start of the 1988 Chequamegon 40 mountain bike race in Hayward, Wisconsin.