1996 Kona Explosif-small update 12-10-10

[magas]

Hi, was reading a lot here during the past weeks and thought it would be time to say hello to all of you and also post my bike. I like the stuff you all have and enjoy reading.
I bought my Kona in July 1996 from the Austrian Kona distributor/importer; after some modifications and more than 10 years of use it now looks like that:

Over this period of time it serve me well and was always pleasent to drive and never failed a single moment !

Hope you like it also



Martin

 

[Harryburgundy]

Very nice....my favourite colour

 

[longun]

sweet build bud,the brake lever covers have really opened my eyes to those levers
looks great in green with gold judys,i like lots

 

[guybe]

Very nice bike, did you have another brake cable stop brazen on top tube?
I like the green tyres to blend in with the green frame.

 

[sunchaser]

That's a really nice one

 

[Little Bob]

Lovely & in beautiful condition too by the looks of it.

 

[Augustus]

welcome.

georgeous bike.

 

[Anthony]

Very nice bike, did you have another brake cable stop brazen on top tube?
I like the green tyres to blend in with the green frame.

He'd have done well to have matched the original paint so nicely as that if he'd had any brazing done Guy! No, my identical frame has one and in fact I think 96 Konas all had rear V-stops from half way through the season. The Explosif was still sold with Maguras, and lower models with Curve cantis, but Kona started to provide V-stops as soon as V-brakes came out, in much the same way as they started to to provide disc tabs long before they fitted discs as standard equipment.

Funnily enough, I'm going to be probably the only one here who doesn't like those tyres with the frame colour, so I'm grateful to Magas because I was intendingto get some even though they seem to go for £40 a pair on eBay now, so he's just saved me some money!

 

[magas]

Very nice bike, did you have another brake cable stop brazen on top tube?
I like the green tyres to blend in with the green frame.

He'd have done well to have matched the original paint so nicely as that if he'd had any brazing done Guy! No, my identical frame has one and in fact I think 96 Konas all had rear V-stops from half way through the season. The Explosif was still sold with Maguras, and lower models with Curve cantis, but Kona started to provide V-stops as soon as V-brakes came out, in much the same way as they started to to provide disc tabs long before they fitted discs as standard equipment.

Funnily enough, I'm going to be probably the only one here who doesn't like those tyres with the frame colour, so I'm grateful to Magas because I was intendingto get some even though they seem to go for £40 a pair on eBay now, so he's just saved me some money!

no brazing had done to the frame - and the frame has no V-brake cable stops. I used some old stuff from the scrap box to go with V-brakes.

@ anthony: your welcome

I'm thinking of rebuilding the bike to '96 OE specs - what do you guys think about it ? I found the article from a German magazine which convinced me that I must have an Explosif and the more I look at it again, the more I fell in love with the look of it :roll:

 

[magas]

Update !

after all I found most of the OE parts in my shed and sourced some matching tires, and bingo: 1996 style

my favorite