retro DH bikes . . . and some ill person ramblings!

[LeeDevelopment]

At first the Yeti ARC AS LT (Under Missy and Myles et al)

Then the Intense M1 (under Palmer)......I've had several M1's in my times.

Had loads of problems with the Foes frames, they folded really easily and cracked at other times. (Foes LTS 16" at first and then the Foes DHS Mono later). I'd also put in the '00 Spooky Project X......beautiful frame, but weighed a freakin' ton!

 

[P20]

Partly because of my soft spot for Cannondale, and partly for being ahead of its time, I reckon the Cannondale Fulcrum has to worthy of a mention

The best bike i ever saw in the flesh was the Intense M1. That thing was something else, you dropped it and it just stuck to the floor, no bounce, just landed and sat there :shock:

I never rode any of these, well up and down the street on the Intense hardly counts, just my opinion. If you don't like it i'll think of something else

 

[Birdman]

When I got into cycling, DH specific stuff was only just getting going, always wanted a Velicchi Iron Horse type machine with a nice anno swingarm.

Surely one of the first bikes to be badged up by many different manufacturers.
And I really love this pic of it in action

 

[andrewl]

...and the Turner / Kona Stab which was the same bike.

Wash your mouth out sir!!!

The Turner Burner and Kona Stab are completely different bikes.

The Misser brothers used Kona badged Turner Burner DH's in 96 and Kona badged Turner Afterburners in 97. The 97 Kona Misser Replica is just a Turner Burner DH too.

None of these are the Kona Stab though, rear suspension is different for starters. The Stab design was influence by the Burner DH and Afterburner but thats as close as it gets

 

[Raumer]

ATX 990 was quite nice to ride but broke very easily. The Marin's seemed to just break! The Iron Horse design had good suspension travel but the swingarm was very flexible, was a bit like a ski going round corners! Intense M1 was good for big stuff but always found they struggled on UK courses and they were over priced! Liked the DH4000 and really liked the Pace RC500.

The one bike that we had for downhill and one of our friends had though was a Scott LSD World Cup. Absolutely superb, adjustable everything - BB height, travel, rising rate, falling rate, linear rate, swingarm length, headtube angle. Also available with a saddle that used two seatposts - abou the same length as a motocross one! Best bits though were that it was strong enough to take anything we threw at it and Scott would warranty it for a season of Grundig World Cup racing!

Ed

 

[daj]

and really liked the Pace RC500.

I was reading in an old dirt mag, I have no idea which pace it was but a pretty high standard team pulled out of a complete season rather than ride the new sponsored Pace bikes?!? :shock:

 

[stevet1]

I remember a lot of people riding rotwild bikes at local races, as well as sintesi bazookas and LTS's. Every bike had an orange bomber Z1 on the front.

 

[Raumer]

The Rotwild's worked quite well and were good value for money. Looking forward to getting my one built up. Speaking to an ex Hope sponsored DH'er who used to ride them he was impressed with them. But there was a weakness around the headtube when running triple clamps. They found a small amount of ovalisation. One of the temporary solutions they used when this happened was a jubilee clip round the outside of the headtube.

Tried bombers on a few different bikes but always found that they suffered from massive amounts of flex. The pace RC500 frame was very good and don't remember hearing problems with it, although there weren't many around! The forks were a different matter. From what I remember there were a lot of teething troubles, a friend's set went back to pace 3 or 4 times over a period of a year before they worked well.

The Sunn Radical was a superb bike to ride but could be quite limited with the RTS style suspension design. The works team were changing the links for each course and running quite advanced data logging systems. Somewhere I've got an MBi with an article on them.

Ed

 

[The Ken]

1988 rockhopper comp - 50th outer ring beyond it's limit - 48 mph on a fire road at Glentress in about 1990-91, can't beat that feeling.

 

[Wytze]

I still ride an old Intense M1, but it is a bit overkill. Great for big things and steep
fast downhill tracks (like Metabief). But I find myself mostly using my Nicolai
with only 140mm for downhill instead. The M1 is a nightmare if you have
sections where some serious pedalling is needed and also the rear suspension
tends to lock up on braking (single pivot).