Bike brands that were of their time and then disappeared

I still have one of these in the garage, but Mrs TG made me have it sprayed red, on the promise that she would ride it. She never did.

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Have Grafton canti’s been done yet?

used to have a bright pink zefal pump

i still have my local motion dominator gloves

😀

I lways had a thing for cranks….

Kooka

Grafton

Topline

Syncros

Magic Motorcycle

Hmmm – that Atomlab crash shot kinda looks like the rider’s fault – he appears to have used every possible mm of travel in the fork and even then still had enough impact inertia that he couldn’t hold onto the bars suggesting a VERY hard landing – can’t see how the wheels caused that crash unless they folded in mid air, acted like wings and increased his lift causing him to jump too far……..

Anyway back OT – WTB greaseguard headsets are still around and fitted to a number of our bikes (I actually greased mine last night for the first time in ages). They’ve certainly outlasted every cartridge bearing headset we’ve ever owned. We have one that the top o-ring never stays in place, but all the others have been perfect (many over 10 years old on original balls).

Will try and get some photos of the Parkpre out and about at weekend.

I’ve got a trashed set of the Quasar linkage forks in the attic – Girvins were better (if better is the right word).

And a pile of Onza clipless pedals. Light and pretty but not much good.

And a HiteRite.

And some mk1 Onza Bold Bar Ends (with the moulded rubber clamp cover) Gosh they were heavy.

Someone said Diamondback.

They aren’t dead in our garage. I bought my girlfriend one (Ascent) for her 21st. One wedding, two children, three houses and almost 20 years later they bike is in our garage. Still gets ridden regularly – needed new brakes and gears last year, so it now has those new fangled Vee brake things, but otherwise refuses to die.

Wish they still made bikes like that.

you can relive the shitness for a mere £60…
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/fs-rst-461-dh-forks-50-gbp-shipped

I don’t have to. I have a set with springs instead of elastomers on my old Scott Neva.

i still have my local motion dominator gloves

haha I had several pairs of those.. totally forgot until saw your pic!

I had an Al Carter “Sacramento” in lush mettalic blue. Posh Townsend iirc, bought by chance when I bent the handlebars on the Raleigh I had, and the shop in Windermere sold me a complete ex-hire bike for not a lot…I would need to scan a pic, as I can’t find any.

Def a posh Townsend.. had the black panther 🙂

The Black Panther was a good route towards a cheap full Shimano DX groupo.

Picked a mint one up the other year and stripped the parts for an Orange. 8)

Can anyone get hold of an Azonic DS1 for me?

Wasnt there a late 90’s brand called ‘Iron Tools’? as well?

Heavy Tools?

Not so much Marzocchi, but the company who made springs to go inside the forks so you can run a lower air pressure.

Also the steer/crown clamp design was great, just swap out your 1″ steerer to a 1″ 1/8 when changing frames. talk about future proofing

It was always a strange idea to make the lowers tapered like that as it made the very flexy. Considering what they were up against as the bench mark of rigidity (Pace RC35’s, Manitou 1, RS Mag 20’s) that made them veeerrryyy noodley.

my contribution from my company “Bombproof”, based in Newcastle during the 90s

Was it Rob Cole who did bombproof. Frames seem familiar from uni rides 95 on.

Edit – missed your first line!

Always wondered what happened with those frames – I remember you telling me about them on one of the Wed or Sun Northumbria and Newcastle uni rides.

Grafton brakes
Syncros straight blade forks

Had both of the above on a carbon S works circa the early nineties

Emmelle – whatever happened to them?
MBK – again, where are they now?
Donohue custom British frames

Scott Pederson self energising brakes

Browning electronic chainsets – I still have two in their boxes. Bought on a whim for a tenner each!

Falcon bikes

Dawes – they made some nice stuff in the early nineties

Muddy Fox – how I wanted a yellow Explorer

Caramba double barrel cranks – I still have a set somewhere

Bullet Brothers forks – really not very good at all, to be honest

Boy, there has been a lot of tat over the years eh?

just remembered these things…

I’m going to say Marin. I know they are still about, but no way as cool as they used to be!

just remembered these things…

Cool tool! Still my main trail tool, missing the 8mm/10mm Allen adapter though :-(.

Anyone remember the Local Motion frame shoulder bags?

and gloves 🙂

I remeber when 5th element brought their platform shock out and how it was a leap forward for suspension. Don’t see them about now. Oh and Foes- I know they still exist but you never see them now.

esher shore – Member
my contribution from my company “Bombproof”, based in Newcastle during the 90s…

I wasn’t living in the UK at the time, but I remember seeing a pic and the name. What happened?

Hopefully you have hung on to a bike or 2.

Gone, but NOT forgotten:
Townsend
British Eagle
Coventry Eagle
Apollo
Emmelle
Falcon

Things I wish hadn’t disappeared:
Campagnolo off-road groupsets
Avocet saddles
Mavic headsets
Tioga Farmer Johns (they were probably crap, but seemed cool at the time)
Sach/Huret Success groupset (road)
Suntour Superb Pro groupset (road)

MTBs that I drooled over 25 years ago:
Kestrel Carbon
Saracen Kili Flyer Comp
Dawes with 531OR tubing (Edge ?)
Diamond Back Axis (Prestige tubing, smoky paint job)
Anything by Roberts with fillet brazing

Dirty habit and unt clothing brands are rarely seen much anymore.

I used to have a DDG Shooter with drop off 130’s and planet-x BMF rims shod with gazzaloddi tyres back in the day.

M friend rode a 24 bikes le toy and still has it but it was a heavy old Bertha!

@epicyclo

@teethgrinder

To cut a really long story short.

We could not get our frames made in the UK, we tried a dozen different fabricators over 14 months including motorbike builders, engineering companies and small machine shops. The UK could not produce aluminium alloy frames to a good quality in any capacity.

The prototypes were easy to build as I used the facilities at the University of Northumbria, bribing the engineering department with whiskey to cut/mitre the tubing, and a welder in the 3-D design department with beer. We had a large Alcan distributor up the road, so I could walk in and buy 6082 T-6 off the shelf. I did the heat treatment myself in the engineering building. But this was not suitable for production.

We ended up working with a factory in Cairns, Australia, that had built a good reputation for contract work for a number of other brands including Ozziroo and Living Extreme (the first ‘mail order’ direct bike brand in the USA). The bike in the photo below is a sample frame they sent over to the UK for me.

I went to Cairns for a few weeks to sort out production which included our own tubeset, and everything looked good until our production frames failed to arrive on time, and phonecalls to the factory went unanswered.

During this time I was finishing my industrial design degree and built the prototype “D3” bike in the UK.

We employed a local solicitor to visit the premises in Cairns and found out that the owner had disappeared with our money, and money from the other 4 brands he was working with. The cost of attempting to trace the owner and recover our money was deemed to be too high.

During all these production troubles we had been running our Factory Race team with the Weavers, Adam Robertson and myself and test rider Chris Markie, but this was costing a small fortune and we had trouble keeping things running.

Bombproof Bikes Ltd. ended up in administration as we ran out of time and money; I moved back to London and my business partner concentrated on his financial services business.

Emmelle – whatever happened to them?

Emmelle was the cheap bike brand of MooreLarge and Co. The exotic sounding name “Emmelle” simply came from the owners initials “M” & “L”
Moore large used to also distribute other brands such as Diamondback and Barracuda. Nowadays I think Haro is their premium brand and “freespirit” seems to have replaced Emmelle as their cheap one. leaving Barracuda somewhere in the middle.

I was going to say Peugeot, but then looking on Google images found a link to a discussion on this forum about the brand.

My first copy of MBUK featured their DH racing team with some innovative parallelogram forks.

A picture form their old catalogue, this model was, or close to the top of their range at the time.

That’s nice Pieface !

Do you look on the RetroBike forum ? You’ll find all sorts of goodies. It’s the best website going globally for this kind of thing.

I’ll always have a soft spot for Peugeot mtbs as on, a rented, one in a French static caravan park, I finally cracked wheelies, 17 years ago.

The knack has long since gone.

I had a Freespirit, it was my first MTB. Red, 20″ all steel gate with 10spd and big wide bars with integrated stem. It was below Emmelle (who did some OK stuff up to about 300lx level). I worked in Moore’s cycles who (funnily enough),sold the M&L range which was Free spirit/Emmelle/DiamondBack & Scott USA. I eventually upgraded to a Scott Montana with AT4-Pro bars.

Adding a forgotten brand… SRP, speciality racing products, purveyor of essential performance enhancing Ti bolts.

Diamond Back Axis (Prestige tubing, smoky paint job)

I had the Ascent EX of similar vintage. Pearlescent white with smoke/blue metallic ends. Stunning paintwork, IMHO.

I hammered one of these all over Salisbury Plain, South Devon and anywhere else I could get to. Over the years it had Profile Durango bars among other silliness! Saddle was changed pretty much straight off for a Turbo.

esher shore – Member
…We ended up working with a factory in Cairns, Australia, that had built a good reputation for contract work for a number of other brands including Ozziroo and Living Extreme (the first ‘mail order’ direct bike brand in the USA)….

That might explain why your bike sounded familiar.

I was in business and living in Cairns back then.

Which business was it – or who was the owner? It would be interesting to see if it’s anyone I recognise.

I’ve still got a bag of srp bolts around somwhere
Used to have to fit loads to shimano rear mechs in a time before alloy hangers that fail before the frame

Venhill rings

great thread.

Used to drool over the Schwinn Straight 8 (think that was the name – beast!)

Are Azonic still about?

Also , seen Diamondback mentioned a bit, they’re sponsoring a big US pro road team this year, riding this:

Got another one!
As this owner rode this to the shop, (up for sale as well!)
As I used to have a hard tail many moons ago, great bike with oval tubing etc at the junctions, ahead of there time.