Kona Kilauea / Explosif paint job mystery

[sepe84]

Live in Finland and have locally run into examples of the late 90's (1997ish?) Kilauea in Explosif colors

Check out below - both those gold and red paint jobs are actually Explosif themes. Have not seen these colours on the Kilauea anywhere else, but these are 100% originals, not resprays - both were bought off original owners. The gold one is Columbus Cyber and red one Tange Prestige tubing.

Have you seen similar, or any other insights? Own theory is that the local importer has had something to do with it...

Cheers

Gold:

Red:

PS. The gold frame might be up for sale

 

[Rodmunch]

They look great! What size are they? The gold one in particular. Thanks!

 

[magas]

interesting what you got here.

assuming both Kilaues are in there original colour scheme (for Finland ?), than the gold Kilauea is a 96 one and the red one is from 95.

referring to the golden one - as its easier to disguise from the larger image - it looks as original in terms of decals as the blueish Kilauea from the 96 brochure - just in the same gold colour as the 96 Kula (do the 97 Explosif have the same gold ?)

It would be quite challenging to copy the gold tone of the 96 Kula for a respray. Depending of the light, the colour is changing from gold to a kind of orange with some flitter in the pigments. At least my Kula has that.



size is 19" - Columbus Cyber steel, decal on the seattube seems to say that. Serial # would be nice to compare with the 96 Kilauea, I got.

The red one is hard to tell, as pic. is quite small the see the details.

 

[sepe84]

Re:

Thanks for the reply and Kula reference!

Serial # on the gold one seems to be H6A3 3364

Red one is owned by a friend of mine, need to ask for better photos...

Would make sence these two are from different years due to the different tubing used

 

[al-onestare]

Very, very nice. I really like the 95 colour, it's almost cherry red / purple.

I don't know the full in's and out's but the Scandanavian arm of Kona seemed to be a real strong-point back in the day. Not only were the rarer, North American models available to import 'easily', they had these very special, unique colour combinations. I've never seen these variants before.

It's funny to see the 96 Kilauea in the 96 Kula paint job, which was lightened up a bit for the 97 Explosif.

 

[redzephyr]

That 95 is sweet, get that 96 back on the road!