Manitou FS almost finished

20’ Manitou FS born on the 31st of March 1993 **and still crack free !

I’ve had this frame for a while now ….in fact well over a 12 months
having taken it out of the box to gaze in awe at it many times, I feel it’s now time to make some progress.

This frame came to these shores via a seller in Thousand Oakes California which is only 45 minutes down the road from Avenue Scott in Valencia where B.I.T.D Manitou were based, Having studied every part of this frame the only wear/tear I could find was storage damage to one of the fork decals and a tiny bit of chain suck which led me to the conclusion its never been properly ridden.. wanting to know more I contacted the U.S. seller to enquire if he knew the background on my frame and promptly received the following reply from Gabe ….thank god for people with more money than sense


A husband who had more money than sense bought it for his wife to ride.
He figured the suspension plus a huge ass comfort seat on it would make her want to ride
along the local paved paths with him. She hated it and never rode.
Years later they divorced and it sat in a storage unit while they sorted out the shared property.
She put an ad on CL, and I bought it. I rode it a few times locally, before selling it to raise funds
for another project.
I think you can comfortably say it has never been off road (and barely ridden.)
BTW, she was about 5'06" tall! She had the seat slammed all the way down and a short riser stem
on it. Probably why she hated riding it.

Gabe

Wish I'd asked him what the hell he was building must be somefink special to let this go.

As far as my build goes I’m intent on having an understated build as I don’t feel such a unique frame needs a ton of anno to attract attention, although if you search what others have done to their FS it still works. As mines a 93 model it will be mostly M900 as it came with an endless band F/D

Below are a few snaps sadly not up to Naders standard, and please ignore the badly adjusted seat and the x-Rays that just happen to be on the donor bar.

First job on the list is to pull the suspension apart as both F&R are rather sluggish and I’d happily bet my bottom dollar that the elastomers are the 20yr old originals that the factory fitted back in late 92/ early 93

like!

Wowzers that's sooooooo cool, infact it's possibly sub zero

sick looking bike, I love manitou FS bikes.

very yummy
be great build

Great story! Manitou build as a commuter bike... Nice bike!

Worth it just for the BB engraving. Never seen anything so good. Ever.....although once I had a unknown Ti frame from Asia
which had hand etched tiny crisp gorgeous numbers in a peculiar style which impressed me.

Always, always, always wanted one of these! So nice!

Thanks for the comments guys, the one above raised a smile

When this frame and Forks came up and in my size I just couldn't resist buying …… I did wrestle with my conscious for 24hrs before pulling
the trigger as I hadn’t started my ARC at that point and I’ve yet to grow a money tree in my back garden, thankfully the wife’s very tolerant
even if she doesn’t understand why a 43 yr old wants to spend good iron on funny looking antique bikes

I took the forks apart today as neither the front or rear were up to much,

The elastomers for the front forks no longer pushed the stanchions back to the top as they had gone hard and compressed slightly making them a few millimeters shorter in stack height. After a full strip down and clean with degreasant the internals sparkle like new

The rear was a different story each leg returned so slowly it was almost painful, upon inspection all but one of the “top out” and “bottom out” elastomers had all turned to a thick highly sticky red goo which took well over 4 hrs to clean out… and adhered to everything it came into contact with rather like Napalm it just won’t wash off.

Replacement elastomers have already been ordered from the guys at Suspension Fork Parts in New Mexico along with wiper seals and extra lub ….


.

I never slept for 24hr when I saw this come up, just kept telling myself its now or never
I'm not religious but if he's there the big fella smiled upon that day