SeeingisBelievingGTMuseum
Old School Grand Master
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Back in 1995, in an effort to get more kids excited about mountain biking, Shimano committed to sponsoring the "Shimano Youth Series" They held kids races on a short track before the beginning of the NORBA nationals those years. Some of you state side may remember these events. GT was one of the few companies to jump in and offer something other than a basic heavy steel Shimano Tourney equipped 24" wheel bike, for that matter something other than a 20" wheel 6 speed like most companies were offering. GT put together 150 of these 24" wheel Zaskar frame kits. They were not cataloged in the 1995 model year because they were a late model addition so not many people knew they even existed but they carried some over and pictured them in the 96 model year catalog (95 decals). I picked one of these up from a bike shop owner in Colorado in '05 who had purchased one and stored it away thinking he'd build it up for his son in a couple years. By the time his son was interested in racing a number of companies were offering XS and 12" frames on 26" wheels and he'd forgotten that he had stored it away. So 9 yrs after buying it he threw it on eBay and I grabbed it NOS/NIB. They were sold as kits with the frame, Ballistic Alloy 1" travel elastomer fork and short extension flip flop chromoly stem. I had originally built this up with STX level parts and a couple my kids put some miles on it. I got carried away a couple years back and decided to trick it out to a kids dream bike with as period correct a parts as I could find. I think we all wish we'd maybe have had something like this to ride back when we were 10-11 yrs old. Would have been fun.
