Oldest mountain bike in UK?

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velomaniac":129blbtx said:

Methinks Kerching might also mean "Have these clowns never heard of horses !!!!"

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Clowns? :shock: Englishman! :roll: :facepalm:

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I'm rather glad I started this thread.

Some excellent angles and really nice archive photos.

I feel it's all gone in quite an interesting circle. Sure, we can find origins a long way back. But we humans share genes with cucumbers. It's not origins I am really focussed on, but at the point at which it can be said that the mutant thing we call a mountain bike came into being in the UK. I reckon the photos of the Overbury's are very telling. The sloping, longer top-tube and dedicated groupsets, and after-market add-ons which actually made sense suggests that the mountain bike crawled out of the primordial swamp of hangover road frame geometry around the late 1980s - probably not far off the 1988/9 which I mithered about in the first post.

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2manyoranges":ts7ufl75 said:

I'm rather glad I started this thread.

Some excellent angles and really nice archive photos.

I feel it's all gone in quite an interesting circle. Sure, we can find origins a long way back. But we humans share genes with cucumbers. It's not origins I am really focussed on, but at the point at which it can be said that the mutant thing we call a mountain bike came into being in the UK. I reckon the photos of the Overbury's are very telling. The sloping, longer top-tube and dedicated groupsets, and after-market add-ons which actually made sense suggests that the mountain bike crawled out of the primordial swamp of hangover road frame geometry around the late 1980s - probably not far off the 1988/9 which I mithered about in the first post.

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Sorry but thats a big fat 'no'

The 'Mountain bike' appeared in the UK in 1982/3

What you are thinking of is the Santa Cruz influence of Bontrager, GT, et al and the explosion that followed from around 1988/9 onward

You have to remember that the Overbury's of danson67 was number 3 off the production line and was influenced by the the Apps' High Paths and the 'traditional' looking Ritchey/ Evans/ Saracen with the high bb and low trail front end geometry - these were available in early 1986. It looks 'modern', it predates Kona and a few others and the TBG Joe Murray 'thing' - he was at the UK 'Man verses Horse' in May 1986 riding a lugless Gary Fisher along with Jackie Phelan on her Cunningham.

Cunningham should have been recognised more for his work than anything else and is most likely to have influenced the Kona shape as we knew it.

The Marin County Repack was a dead end - the 'sport' was what Konas were made for, cross country racing, not downhill fire roads.

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legrandefromage":1vaenxys said:

Sorry but thats a big fat 'no'

The 'Mountain bike' appeared in the UK in 1982/3

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I think LeGrand PCW has laid out the evidence quite conclusively, and anyway, the progression from road bike frames in the 80's wasn’t a mile stone IMO just one of many progressions we’ve seen in ATB/MTB design to this day...surely? :?

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LGF thanks indeed for the correction - the insight re Joe Murray is fascinating and marks a further US-Anglo link which I’ve not heard of before. I certainly was aware of the mid-80s rumblings re which of the majors would deride mountain-biking as a passing fad and which would jump in. Hmmm I’ll reset my clock by a few years ....

My own experience was that Marin stretched their top tubes on the smaller frames in the late 80s - a more proportional stretch on the 15 inch frames - and as someone on these smaller sizes I was the one of the lucky beneficiaries of a more responsive, stretched geometry which allowed much better standover clearance.

It does help knowing people that were there at the time. High Path and Overbury's riders were mixing it up on the trails down in Surrey - some of these people were well know engineers and frame builders.

Muddy Fox were probably the most influential in the uk MTB 'scene' with clever aggressive shouty marketing that got peoples' attention, their bikes being assembled by S&G in Japan (and inadvertently setting the seeds for Orange in the process).





https://www.bikebiz.com/business/founde ... story-film

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LGF - do I remember correctly?.....I seem to remember going into Surf and Ski in Brighton in or around ‘88 and seeing an orange-white fade bike (ie classic Clockwork colours) but with Tushingham as the name logo? I remember the geometry for that bike was radical for the time, including a curved crown for the forks. Tange I seem to remember....

The Tushingham B52 was a Muddy Fox in all but name. Nothing special but the spark of Orange bikes.

https://www.biketart.com/blog/2017/03/o ... und-range/

However... There are some early prototypes (as with Saracen) that were made by UK builders and were / are a bit special

Better explained here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=203977

Apart from the immature bigot's postings in the middle of this thread, it's been a blast reading through. Every single late 80's prototype mountain bike on this thread makes me desperate to find something similar, not sure why, but the history and the wacky long wheelbase geometry really appeals to me, particularly the models before the introduction of the unicrown forks. If anybody out there has an unloved Dawes Ranger, Overburys or early Stumpjumper please sell it to me for a full refurb.

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As a relatively new convert to the very early scene and bikes, im enjoying this thread and the encyclopaedic knowledge of our esteemed members. The early Hams were true trailblazers and unsurprisingly now change hands for crazy money. Only the earlierst Breezers are worth more. If my numbers come up id like one of each please