Trek Y33 Lives on

Thanks for the compliments... its been quite a while building on and off, This is how it was when I bought it. it was in fair condition but there were several things straight away that were wrong, rear shock was to long by over an inch which totally screwed up the handling, plus terrible bob going up hills. Once I found a shock that fitted that was it really i just kept changing things. At one point it had a pair of Sid Carbon race forks which were super light! but again rather short so loaded up the front to much for my liking, the Rebas are just about perfect for what I want to do on it. At its lightest with the old wheels and tyres it weighed in at 11.3 kilo/26.9lb its now at 11.98kilo/26.4lb with the Spinergy rims and road tyres. Not bad I guess for an old thing. It is just gorgeous to ride however... Dual XTR shifters, rapid rise rear mech, XTR rear cassette, Middleburn chain rings on front.. it just clicks into gear and goes and goes... Just love it! There are loads of modified bits too, seat tube slash cut into an ark to follow the frame shape, the little alloy rear shock cable stays were sourced from some random old road bike, frame then drilled and tapped with metal fixings to secure them, Stainless steel bolts on various parts e.g. rear shox mounts are turned down and chamfered. I produced all the artwork for all the decals in Adobe illustrator and had them made up at a sign shop. etc etc Its a proper attention grabber too draws a crowd where ever it goes, still a few things to sort, pedals, frame pivot bolt needs chroming, change that metal rear mech guard for something more suitable. it could just go on

Never has a URT frame looked so modern and fresh looking ......and in your face loud
It's actually the 1st MTB I've seen that doesn't look crap wearing slicks !!

Your starting point was very nice but OMG it looks like an Ugly sister now. :shock:

The B&W pictures are artistic/moody but this bike deserves to be seen in colour.

Thanks for posting more pictures

Hi Thanks
I spent quite a while looking at tyres I wanted the profile to look right Ive still got the off road ones for when the mood takes... Im looking into some of those Furious Freds really like the look of those.. a lot of money though for a thin wall tyre.. but so light!!
Think its the stickers that do most of the 'in your face' white on black always looks cool. I went for the new style Trek logo, played about with it in Photoshop for a while with all kinds of graphic flashes, go faster stripes etc and then came straight back to just the simple logo, but using just the outline so it shows more carbon. I drew it up in illustrator and had a sign shop make up the stickers. The Spinergy logos I designed too. Theyre slightly different to standard, I made the 'S' smaller than the 'Y' so the word expands as it goes round the rim. If you look the S sits within in the depth of the rim and the last couple of letters bleed off over the edge... got a bit obsessed with it all really ha!

I remember drooling over Y33 and Y22 at Free-Spirit in Meadowhall some years ago, lovely looking frames

A new winter project Bianchi 5200 Black Widow

... here we go again another hot rod build is in the pipeline, happy days;-)
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=276968&p=2066380#p2066380

I always thought that these bikes looked so space age! I remember the American team US Postal turning up on these to a road race, I think it was the Paris-Roubaix and the Race Officials nearly had a heart attack before they blustered that it was bad form to race these frames in a road race. The team had to switch to normal race bikes.

Hi
That sounds a good story, good to hear a bit of history. There is next to nothing on the web. Any idea what year it was 2000 maybe?
Thanks Craig

I think it was either 1999 or 2000.

Re:

Love the bike! I just bought a y33 yellow frame. I have a lot of work to do to make it look good. Any tips for me??

Post some pics.
Only tip really is just enjoy it make it very usable and make it your own
Good luck