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)

the top 10 most iconic mountainbikes ever

I know this is a tricky list because for each mountainbike enthousiast the list will be different.
A few weeks back i started a topic on retrobike to ask for their top 10 and offcourse,..a lot of different lists.
I will use this as a guide because some of these bikes deserve some extra attention.
Also i think the list should contain models instead of brands because brands is focussed enough to my opinion.

And the top 10 as mountainbikes is not the list I would choose because my knowledge about the first/older bikes is very limited and therefore i will be looking at other lists.

feel free to comment me and show me your list or "have to be on the list"

Number 10 -> AMP RESEARCH
Number 9 -> MOUNTAIN CYCLE SAN ANDREAS
Number 8 -> BONTRAGER
Number 7 -> FAT CITY FAT CHANCE

a little but more quiet

I am sorry but due to the bankruptcy of the company i work for i do not have the time to write that much on this Blog as I used to do the last couple of months.
Also i won't be buying bikes a lot for the rest of the year...

but ,....i will be back soon,....

BOTM September 2009 on Retrobike

I won the September BoTM with the Serotta TiMax
was a close race with the Miyata.

3rd place : Octsoc Bontrager Ti Lite
Really nice bike with some very special green parts.
I can tell you 1 thing; green parts are hard to find.


2nd place : ragnar1984 Miyata Century
This is a rather special bike.
I do not know that much about it but the gold is actual gold!
Not my cup-a-thea but something special for sure


and the TiMax
As mentioned before on here