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My very brief history of MTB wheel sizes concentrated on 26" and larger wheel sizes. As you point out, telling the whole story of MTB wheel sizes would take a lot more time. Maybe this could be a subject for a new thread? Yes, there is also a separate and equally interesting, though not as...

The 1981 start date for Reynolds 531-All-Terrain tubing given on their site does not make sense when viewed against the general timeline for MTB production or surviving 531 MTBs. However, the earliest date they give for 501 road tubing is 1981 and the dates they give for 531-All-Terrain tubing...

Yes, it would be great to tie together how the reported designing of the F.W. Evans/Saracen ATB by Gary Smith links to the creation of the bikes. The timescale for this will be between the preparation of the two Ritchey Montares for the February 1983 Sahara Expedition and the bikes first...

The Reynolds website is at best a secondary modern source of information and so only can be trusted if the information it contains comes from primary contemporary sources. So when you say that you 'wouldn't give it much credence', I partially agree that you. Yes, the information it contains may...

Thank you very much for posting these scans from the 1983 Freewheel catalogue. They are extremely informative and paint a picture of retailers selling mountain-bikes into a market who did not know anything about them. It is especially interesting that they are also targeting urban riders well...

A very good point. Back then there was no internet and research was done via; books, magazines, word of mouth/telephone-conversations and letter writing. There was no Google Translate and if you wanted to source components from abroad you either had to hope that they understood English or know...

Yes, memories can play tricks and a bike that was named after an MTB expedition up mount Kilimangaro in 1985 is highly unlikely to predate that event. The imbedding of incorrect facts, or incorrectly conflated facts as above, into long-term memory can turn the most honest of people into abject...

5th of December 2021 and the Clelands are off to play in the woods once more: Video of last year's ride

I mentioned earlier that I was restoring an off-road bike who's frame was built by Bill Whitcomb who built frames Walvale cycles. The thread that covers the history and restoration of this bike is here: https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/geoff-apps-1981-700c-range-rider-prototype.382308/ In...

I do like to listen to Icelandic seat-post-rock whenever I am mounting a pair of Hakkapeliittas. When I say Hakkapeliittas, I mean the type of Finnish tyre and not the Finnish mounted cavalrymen they are named after.

Great to have such a wide variety of non 26" wheeled bikes. The history of mountain-bikes has been influenced by the economics involved in creating new tyre sizes. In the case of larger diameter mountain-bike tyres: Why invest in the manufacture a larger tyres, when they will not fit existing...

According to this PDF file from Reynolds, 501-ATB tubing was available between 1984 and 1989. http://www.reynoldstechnology.biz/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/decal_history.pdf So no mountain-bikes could have been made using Reynolds 501-ATB prior to 1984. Interestingly, Reynolds 531-ATB tubing is...

Hi enkidu, Well done and good luck in in your quest to create other timelines. I can add a little information about what inspired the creation of the Saracen ATB. It goes right back to two journalists, Richard Grant and Richard Ballantine who were keen to introduce and promote US style...

Here are some scans of Rob Van der Plas' Mountain Bike Book (1984). This was the first book about mountain bikes to be published. Below the 1981 Cleland Range-Rider is shown in an earlier configuration fitted with 650x54b tyres and cow-horn handlebars. As a prototype the bike would have...