Zaskar help!

[Hovis_loaf]

I joined with big plans of rebuilding my Zaskar, after a hello (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=363807) and some encouragement I got to work......then ground to a halt. I stripped it down, found somewhere to get it ball burnished, spoke with TF about sorting the forks and exchanged a few e-mails with Gil about the decals. Life just got in the way.

Anyway, I am hoping to get it sorted for the summer so had another look on the web as I have never been able to find one with the exact decals I have. Until now!! I found one on ebay and I am hoping someone here knows something about what I have. I found a listing for a 2000 Zaskar frame (item 122913357884). It is the same as mine and says that it is a limited edition frame, only 1000 were made. I bought it from the GT dealer at the bottom of Park St in Bristol, I popped in with a mate to buy an inner tube and it was hanging on the wall looking shiny. It became my pride and joy for many years and served up plenty of fun.....and often pain!

Does anyone have or know someone who might be able to shed a little light on this?

Mark

 

[T'boo Ted]

Yeah that looks like a 1997/8 in the ebay auction, not a 2000...and 1000 made... pppfffttt, yeah OK its a regular zaskar not even an LE.
People say all sorts of stuff about things, when they don't really have a clue..."its limited, give me more money".
The 1st 4 numbers on your serial number are the month and year made (MMYY), late months (like sept-ish on) will give you next years year model/decals.
(1997 & 98 LE's have the integrated seat collar and funky dropout, 97 none LE's have nither, 98 LE's have the integrated collar, but not the dropout).

 

[T'boo Ted]

heck even in the picture you can see the serial number - 07971617 -19. So july 1997 frame #1617 size 19 inch. Kinda shoots down the"1000" made since they got to 1600 in July...

 

[Hovis_loaf]

Re:

Thanks for the help, it makes a whole lot more sense to me now. As i said in my "hello" I thought mine was a 97.

Helpful info on the serial number I'll have a look at mine and find out exactly what it is.

 

[T'boo Ted]

yeah youll find if you do a bit of searching for zaskars on here a few big threads... there are a bunch of rules which dictate a number of things ie whether it IS a zaskar or not, which years had which features etc... which is really good for narrowing things down...only problem is that pretty much every rule will be broken at some point

eg, the frame in the auction is clearly a 97 serial number..but 98 decals...decals are easily chnaged on the frames (no clearcoat)... but it also has the integrated clamp but only the plate style dropouts, so that makes it a 98...but then july seems to be early to be making next years frames... but...doesn't make it impossible.
But its the catalogue that has the frame details that way...and the catalouges were shot ready for 97 and 98, so whos to say they just used old frames for the shoot, but then changes to production happened way earlier...but either way youd be able to buy a 98 frame sometime in late 97... so things get a bit muddy...

 

[Hovis_loaf]

Re:

I did look at a few posts yesterday and was surprised with how much info there is. I'm going to have a look at mine tonight to see exactly what it is, I am 99.99% certain it is a Zaskar.

Rules are there to broken are they not? Well perhaps not broken but certainly tested!

 

[T'boo Ted]

edited above fo more info...


yeah the thing about them not being zaskars is that it's really easy to change decals, so you get someone with an arrowhead and putting zaskar decals, then ebaying for 300 instead of 70... but it's easy to tell as only zaskars have flat end caps on the top tube...er... well except the 92/93 pantera's and 97 or 98 avalanches... oh and only zaskars have a number only serial number on the dropout and 6061 on the other dropout... except those same avalanches...

 

[Hovis_loaf]

Re:

Ok so it all makes perfect sense now. Mine is a march 1998 frame which I bought in very early 1999 (for the princely sum of £240 inc the bottom bracket if my memory serves me correctly) and built in 2000. The whole 97 think hadn't ever made loads of sense as I have 2000 sid sl's and was 99.9% sure that it hadn't taken me two years to get round to building it. All the other pointers I looked out re the genuine zakar question and they check out which is nice!

Thanks for the help, it was mucho useful!

 

[Hovis_loaf]

Re:

Well it turns out that I have another question, I have had a look at other threads but not seen this mentioned.....I just moved the frame and noticed that it has 6061 on both rear drop outs. Like I said I have not seen that mentioned in any post only it normally being on the drive side. Does that mean anything or just that someone was over zealous with the stamp that day?

 

[T'boo Ted]

Re:

Yeah id say someones screwed up then redid it.

Like i said, theres rules, that stipulate how it should be , and theyll all be broken somehow