I have just bought a Kona frame off eBay. It is badged as a Caldera, but seems a trifle shonky. It is black, with red graphics outlined white and the jungle head-badge. I’m thinking 1998-2000 ish but can’t get a decent handle on it.

Slightly wierdly, while it has cast dropouts they are not as nice as the Ritchey ones on my 2000 Lava Dome, and it has rack mounts, which I was not expecting.

Have I got a rebadged horror?

Cheers folks. 🙂

Found this 2002 model on Google.

Ah, on further inspection, it is badged as this one, so 1998, the same year as my first Kona, which was that year’s Fire Mountain. The FM had pressed dropouts of a fairly undistinguished nature, and it definitely did have rack mounts.

Hm. If anyone has this frame and is sure of its pedigree, it’d be a great help if you had/could take some dropout pictures.

eBay. A bad idea all around. 😀

Should have said, steel. 😀

Both my ’98 and ’00 explosif had rackmounts. Both had jungle headbadge too. Black would make it a ’98 I think. I’m not sure even my ’98 steel explosif had ritchy cowled dropouts, but I can’t recall precisely, I had them chopped off for track ends a few years ago now.

Caldera’s used to be steel, long time ago. then they turned all Ali if I remember. Built one up ages ago as a ss. It did have shite dropouts…

I’ve got one…

…but I don’t have the back part with me, that’s at my parents, the front of it is here as impromptu hammer

don’t remember the drop-outs being anything special, definitely had rack mounts as plugged the holes, made of un-named steel, was the basic steel frame, caldera about as high up the range it went.