awful designed suspension bikes (retro content ;-)

Softride mark 2, with “damping”

Jamis Diablo

Trek Y paintjob 😉

but they did have other uses (love the water bottle still attached!) –

A lot of these designs would prob ride OK with more modern shocks – well excluding the softride ones.

I give you The Shockster

and in situ

That is a whole new level of special that thing.

The thing is all these monocoque carbon frames are far closer to the correct application of the material than the classic diamond frame.

The rep left one of those shockster things behind when I worked in the trade. We had it for years, he didn’t want it back, tried to sell it, eventually fitted it to a pub bike and good god it was terrifying. Took it off again and sold it to a kid for £20. Was one of those legendary things you know you’ve had for absolutely ages.

Well it’s been mentioned but there aren’t any pictures so far…

Anyone remember the “commuting” version you could buy? Rigid forks and a big foam bumper in place of the shock, designed (apparently) as a comfortable commuter bike.

Madness.

😆 (someone had to, surprised it took this long)

Iain1775, as a five owner, LOL.

And for world DH champ winning reto- awfulness, I give you
[/url] Iron Horse FS-Works[/url] by atmaka[/url], on Flickr[/img]

This is like reading MBUK in the 90’s – ace

I had a Y11 – and it was pretty good – for the time …
I rode a proflex – and that wasn’t ….

i feel a little guilty including these, they’re not *awful* as such, i think they’re quite clever, sort of…

anyway, the kona ‘future shock’:

I know those Kleins wer rubbish to ride, but they did look ace. I’ve seen a chap at Cannock a few times on a purple one complete with Spinergy wheels.

I’ve never seen that bolt on suspension…not a good idea. How much did it weigh?

I had the chance to buy one of those muddy foxes a few years ago. I didn’t and have regretted it ever since. I’d love to have one for retro rides.

I had a Whyte PRST-1 & 4 and despite the looks they both rode well, in fact the PRST-4 is still one of my favorite XC bikes.

Futureshock?

I love the way it was touted as a new thing when leading link suspension had been about on motorbikes for years.

Lawwill did leading better.

Gary Fisher less so with the rear end.

Those GT RTS bikes always looked ace though, they had a properly mean look about them – sorted design. I remember being at the Short Course DH CHamps at Penshurst back in about 1998 and it being THE bike to own. Especially if fitted with RockShox Mag 21 SL Ti, a fork that even back then cost £650! Had a whole 46mm of travel but the really rich folk would have got the long travel kit which put it up to 60mm.

Anyway, how about one of the traditionals:

A mate had one on a sponsorship deal. To be fair he would have been fast on anything but he did the pro thing and only said nice things about it while he was riding it.
Then once the deal was over, he told us all quietly about how dreadful it had been. Again, this was back in late 90’s so most full sus designs were dreadful back then!

There are actually some technologically significant bikes listed there. Represented an existing era! What do we have now – austerity and 29ers

Those Shocksters are still listed on the Lightning recumbent site…

Lightning rear suspension

I must say all these bikes look great to me! I’m a sucker for anything unusual…

Simple and effect human suspension…….hardtail 🙂

zippykona – Member
OK here’s a challenge. Find a picture of the bolt on rear suspension I saw in MBUK back in the day.
It was some sort of parallelogram that fixed to the brake bosses and spindle.

Here’s mine. I’m keeping it in reserve for my worst bike in the world build.

[/url]

epicyclo,
Awesome!
You don’t use it then.

Anyone else remember the Isolator front hub from back in the days when all you needed for front suspension was a hub that had the body separated from the bearings by elastomers 😯

This is funny – I currently own a GT RTS, a Slingshot, a Proflex, and a USE SUB fork 😉

And they’re all brilliant. Well, not sure about the Slingshot as I haven’t got around to building it up. The SUB fork is the best front suspension I’ve ever used.

Had one of these, absolutely loved it…So much so, that I’ve ridden hardtails ever since 😆

If you look at the evolution of motorcycle suspension it used the same designs before settling on what we have now. Very, very odd that bicycle designers didn’t just adapt current motorcycle designs.

There was even a backlash to having rear suspension on off road bikes with many handrail bikes co-existing for years.

Motorbikes don’t have the engine jumping up and down on top – I don’t think you can just translate the design across.

very odd that bicycle designers didn’t just adapt current motorcycle designs.

No constant power source
The need to damp rider induced movement
Efficiency
Differing sprocket sizes
Weight
Packaging

The designs we now have look like adapted modern motorcycle designs. Complete with linkages, mono-shocks and forks.

The designs posted here all look like pre-ww2 motorcycles designs.

“very odd that bicycle designers didn’t just adapt current motorcycle designs.”
“The designs we now have look like adapted modern motorcycle designs. Complete with linkages, mono-shocks and forks.”

Make your mind up eh.

You missed the context. This is about early designs. Bicycle suspension went through the same evolution as motorcycles. Unnecessarily.

They could have just fine gone straight to modern designs by copying motorcycles. Nothing has changed since the early 80s in motorcycle suspension design. Bicycles all follow that design now.

You lear to pedal smoothly when you own one of these:

Followed by one of these:

And one of these:

Then one of these:

And one of these:

I dont have to worry too much about that now though as I have one of these:
[/url]
6-April-2012 (1)[/url] by CaptainS404[/url], on Flickr

Things started getting a lot better from the subfive on. The subfive had a lockout, the five had a swinger and worked quite well. The SL had an RP23, the flux has an RP23 but doesn’t need pro pedal

“Bicycles all follow that design now.”
Apart from Dw link,Fsr,Maestro,Vpp,Zero Loss (and all derivations of twin link/4 bar),Pendbox,Idrive….
I quite like moto style linkage drive single pivots.They are however difficult to design with sufficient anti squat in all chairing sizes.May see more in the future as 1x drivetrain gain popularity.
Good reading here[/url]

All variations of mono-shock linkage rear ends with forks. Which is where they could have started.

Apparently the Mantra was originally designed to have a rigid fork and pivot around the middle, hence the ‘folding in half’ sensation. The commuter version was as close as this got to market.

Those old ProFlex were also on my most wanted list in the 90s…

Ooooh 857…

Don forget the GT RTS…that was an awful looking bike.

😯

RTS1 with spin tri spokes, best looking bike of all time.

Still want one for the wall

Burn him.