Pictures of old and obscure suspension bikes

[Pslide]

did anyone ever figure out how le system worked?

The dirt bike / rally car version is called Bib-mousse. More details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_mousse

[LMC]

The dirt bike / rally car version is called Bib-mousse. More details here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_mousse

Apparently the weight penalty was too large for widespread use in MTB. Rob Warner briefly touched on it in Dirt mag (I think) a few years back.

[OGRipper]

OK, Suspect Device delivered on the Profile Racing frame.

Next Challenge: Early 2000's, a couple of Americans (I think) living as ex-pats in Japan and had a graphics design firm that also designed a few bikes, including a very pretty DH bike. The brand name escapes me, but was Japanese sounding. Anyone remember?

Honda!

What do I win?

[ska todd]

Boom:


The had some "issues" with suspension interaction during braking.

Iron Horse raced the Profile bikes for the 2001 season. We started working with them around Interbike 2000 on geometry and suspension. The bike was designed by Dave Robicheaux and built down in Florida.

The front triangles were 6061 and the swingarm/chainstays were essentially just really long Profile crankarms. The main pivot was a double set of Profile BB bearings, one set pressed into the swingarm, another set into the front triangle, that pivoted on the crank spindle. Super clean execution.

When we first tested the bike at November 00 Plattekill race (where I crashed by S10 pickup coincidentally), it was apparent that the geometry was way steep, the TT was too short, and the rear end suffered from horrible stiffening under braking. Ebbet won the race on it; probably b/c he wouldn't dare risk using his rear brake for fear of it becoming a hardtail w/ a 69 deg HT angle!

That winter Robi tweaked the geometry (66d on paper but they came in at like 64d), lengthened the TT, and added a floating brake arm. We received the race frames literally the Thurs before the April 01 P'kill race, built them up in the Hannah motel on Friday night...and soon found out that the floating brake arms were unusable. They were hollow, untreated, thin aluminum tubes and would flex under the most miniscule amount of braking. To actually ride/race the bikes thru the weekend we ended up ziptie & duct taping screwdrivers and allen wrenches to the brake arm.

By the May P'kill race we had received replacement steel brake arms and the bikes were pretty solid the remainder of the season. The bikes rode a straight line like a freight train. The BB was super low, the HT angle slack, and the CS really long; so they were perfect up on the old Mount Snow course.

Iron Horse had plans to work more closely w/ Profile to refine and develop versions of this bike under the IH brand but tragically Dave Robicheaux passed away in the summer of 01 in a paragliding accident. The project then just lost it's steam as aside from Robi, no one at Profile really seemed to know what to do with the bike.

Had Robi not passed away, would IH have needed to ring up _dw to Apollo 13 the company out of a VPP patent infringement and in process create dw-link?

-ska todd

[Pslide]

I went digging into old old files, found this of the Profile DR-1:

[IH8Rice]

Had Robi not passed away, would IH have needed to ring up _dw to Apollo 13 the company out of a VPP patent infringement and in process create dw-link?

-ska todd

cool story man. seriously. its nice to hear stories about Platty's heyday from people who were using it as a test bed like you guys were.

SC had already bought the patent from Outland around that time right? i think i got my V10 around May of '02

[KavuRider]

If it makes you feel any better, rumor was they were terribly put together and suffered a lot of back end flex. Add to that the twisting seatpost setup, and the bike was a disaster. I had a guy suggest we trade at a plattekill race in 98, and I was on a Straight Six with a Z1...

Wow.
Makes sense though, I wondered about that seatpost setup. Crazy looking bike.

My Apocalypse was an amazing bike. With modern geo/spacing for modern parts that bike would be killer. I had mine built up with a Shiver, then a 888 and fairly light modern parts. Because of the second shock, you couldn't really tweak the geo that much like you could with the Army.

The guys I ride with say that I was the fastest on that bike.

[SPINTECK]

I was visiting a dealer near Milan on Wednesday and spied this beautiful piece of downhill history.

It's Corrado Herin's Sintesi Bazooka race bike from the 1998 season.

















-ska todd

Wow, what a great find. I remember that year because it was the first year I sold out and started a "real job". Myles made some funny statement about an old guy coming out of nowhere to win the worlds. I believe I read the story in Velonews and was just impressed with the story of Herin. He was in his thirtees at the time.

I wonder who made those bikes?? I make that statement b/c I have a 93 DBR with a similar look that rumor had it was made for Diamondback by Ferrachi. I'll try to post a pic of it, I don't believe I saw on in this thread and it's a pretty clean looking bike.

[- seb]

And then there was the successor to the bazooka:




Major bonus points to anyone that can find pictures of the Colella Viper. Made by Louis Colella who Sintesi allegedly stole major aspects of the design from. I remember one of the big mags at the time (MBi?) had a test of the Viper. Retail was 8k pounds and it had some kind of gold coating on the brake rotors...

I remember that, and I still have my old MBi's at home. I'll try to remember to dig it out next time I visit my mum!

[SkullCrack]

[bismojo]

that is the best frame graphic i have ever seen!