rosstheboss
Retrobike Rider
I couldn't give a monkey's either way
Klein .... am I missing something?
- Thread starter nic
- Start date
utahdog2003
Senior Retro Guru
- Feedback
- View
So you're just looking for an attitude adjustment, or somebody to give you a hug? :?
utahdog2003":231ai8xd said::roll: This thread has become just so much sour grapes.
It's really simple...Kleins are popular because they are Kleins.
Nothing else is a Klein.
Nobody smoothed aluminum frames and painted them to glass like Klein.
Nobody payed attention to details like Klein.
Noboy else made as many reaching advancements, for the day, available in frames comparable to Klein.
Nobody.
Many slick features, like internal cable routing, chain suck plates, square to round chainstay swagging, sloped top tubes, quick angles, light weight, etc, are pretty standard fare today, but they were the cat's tits in 1992. Sure the zip-grip seat collars, MC headsets, and press-fit bottom brackets were a pain, but Klein never hid from trying something new. Even those dubious 'advancements' had strengths on paper. A seat tube that provided for tool-less adjustment without the weight or complication of a quick release? Oversized sealed bearings in the bottom bracket? In the head tube? Seems like forward thinking to me. Brand lethargy didn't doom Klein...Only after Klein got rolled into Trek did they die off. Same as Bontrager. (Fisher and Lemond were companies in name only, so they don't get tears from me the way Klein and Bontrager do.
Carsten once posted a picture of a maroon Rascal for sale. Months later, I asked him if it was still available, and he confirmed that it was. I asked him how much and he replied, make an offer. I made him a buyer friendly offer (translation, I low-balled him) and never heard about the frame again. Why? Because he knows what he has. Knows it has enduring value. Knows that there are no real valid questions to that value. And knows not to be suckered by a cheap offer. Kleins are the real deal. Chehalis, pre-Trek Kleins are still respected today for being exactly what they are, handmade, handpainted pinnacles (no pun intended) of engineering packed with technology that back in the day, pushed the envelope hard. Technology not for technology's sake, but for the genuine purpose of creating a better bike, advancement after advancement. Very few companies did as much to create products as distinctive as Klein. Quite frankly, and I've owned a multitude of aluminum frames over the years...Aliens, Stumpjumpers, Cannondale Beasts, Zaskars...in my estimation, nobody did aluminum frames better. And as long as you stayed out of the proprietary headset frames, they were pretty reasonably priced to boot! (Rascal!)
The reason why Klein gets crapped on today is simple, and two fold...first, they are pretty. They are glamorous. Nobody likes glamorous mountain bikes, at least, nobody takes the idea seriously....unless they owned one or aspired to. Mountain bikes shouldn't twinkle like a disco stage AND ride like the wind too, should they? People hated then and hate today, on the paint. SURELY, a bike that looks THAT blingy just can't be legit, right? :roll:
Secondly, and this it the big sticking point to me...Kleins are considered toys of the rich. Props to the midlife crisis sufferers like Jerry Seinfeld, who would just buy the things to hang them on the wall. Sad but true, yet this isn't Klein's fault, any more than its Porsche's fault that they are the automotive equivalent. How many Porsches get used on track days? Does that make a Porsche less of a sports car? Is that really Porsche's fault? Am I concerned that if I show up at the trail head on my Rascal that others will think I'm a rich old poser fart? Uh...NO! In fact, I'm glad that many Kleins were purchased by rich old fart posers back in the day, it means that there are clean examples of the brand available to us now, probably in percentages of total manufactured numbers far higher than other high-zoot brands from back in the day. Is that really bad? Is Shamus supposed to be SAD that Adroits are hanging on walls in retired executive garages, just waiting for the auction block? :shock:
On the durability front...let's be real here. Kleins are not brittle. 15-20 years later, we are talking about cracked seat tubes and some other niggles...YEARS! I know that Zaskars have broken too, but I'm not labeling them as brittle (although admittedly, the 1st gen Zaskar is a burlier frame than anything Klein ever made). If you broke a Klein using it for cross country work, you'd have probably broken a Beast too, or an American, or a Yeti, or (certainly) a Manitou. Finish work? I've never seen 'fragile' Chehalis paint. You can whack my Rascal with a hammer and it wouldn't chip. Why do you think starTrek has to do all that scraping?
Don't blame Klein for being Klein. Embrace Klein for being Klein. In the immortal words of Porsche..."There is no substitute"
Mate........ Your my hero !!!
You saved me around three hours of typing !!!
My sentiments EXACTLY !!!!!!
utahdog2003
Senior Retro Guru
- Feedback
- View
Inigo Montoya
Senior Retro Guru
- Feedback
- View
great post utahdog, thanks!
GearlessinSeattle
Senior Retro Guru
I have read this thread since it started and I feel that now I must put my 2 cents in.
In 1989 my friend and I moved to Sun Valley, Idaho or Ketchum as the locals like to call it. We moved in with a friend that had an 89 Rascal. What a bike! It put my 87 DB Ascent to shame. I could not believe the beauty of this thing they called a Klein. It was then that my love of Klein’s started as well as my love of all things MTB.
By 1990 I was working in a shop called Backwoods Mtn Sports in Ketchum that sold Kleins, Trimbles, Cannondales and Bridgestones. I still could not afford a Klein so I settled with a 1990 M800 XT. My friend that had the 89 Rascal left his bike out in front of our house 1 night and to his surprise the next morning it was gone never to be seen again.(stoner mistake #67) He got the insurance for it and bought a 90 Attitude Team. WOW! Even better then the Rascal.
During the summer of 1990 and 1991 I was riding the trails around Sun Valley and Ketchum at least 4 times a week with my friend that had the Attitude. Did his Klein ride better then my “Beast of the East”? Did it climb better? Descend faster? I was able to ride his Attitude a couple of times on the same trails that I would ride my M800 and even though his bike cost 3 times as much I did not think the ride was much different but that did not stop me from wanting one.
It was 6 years later that I finally was able to afford a Klein. I found a 1994 Adroit in the paper for $1400. It was my size and it was Gator. The fellow that I bought it from was a team rider for a local bike shop and was selling it for the cost of his new ride. He was going to full suspension.
I brought that bike home, sat it in the living room and just looked at it until my girlfriend, now my wife, made me take it downstairs. I loved the feel of the Adroit and it handled like a dream. Sure, it beat the heck out of me and I ached after each ride but it was a good kind of pain. I owned that bike till 98 when, shipping it to Georgia, UPS lost it. I was crushed. By then the full suspension craze was at full force so with the insurance money I bought a Specialized Stumpjumper FS. Since then I have owned about every type of bike you can imagine. I flip-flopped between hardtails and FS bikes, geared and SS and all types of tubing. But for some reason I still missed that Klein.
Now 10 years later I can find Attitudes and Adroits but it is hard to justify buying them. A friend of mine once said “when you’re young you have all the time to do what you want but not the money and when you’re older you have the money but not the time”.
I think the reason that Kleins command the price they do is not because they are the best riding bike of their day but because they are a legend, a mystical creature that only a few owned new and something we all have wanted at 1 time or another. I have owned 4 since my first Klein and I am now an owner of a 1992 Attitude XTR. Now every time that I ride it, it brings me back to a time when things were simpler. I still get comments about how cool it is even now. There is just something about a Klein that makes your heart beat a little faster and your smile to get a little bigger.
Thanks for reading.
BTW-I am in Chehalis about every 2 weeks and I can still feel the ghost of Gary riding around.
In 1989 my friend and I moved to Sun Valley, Idaho or Ketchum as the locals like to call it. We moved in with a friend that had an 89 Rascal. What a bike! It put my 87 DB Ascent to shame. I could not believe the beauty of this thing they called a Klein. It was then that my love of Klein’s started as well as my love of all things MTB.
By 1990 I was working in a shop called Backwoods Mtn Sports in Ketchum that sold Kleins, Trimbles, Cannondales and Bridgestones. I still could not afford a Klein so I settled with a 1990 M800 XT. My friend that had the 89 Rascal left his bike out in front of our house 1 night and to his surprise the next morning it was gone never to be seen again.(stoner mistake #67) He got the insurance for it and bought a 90 Attitude Team. WOW! Even better then the Rascal.
During the summer of 1990 and 1991 I was riding the trails around Sun Valley and Ketchum at least 4 times a week with my friend that had the Attitude. Did his Klein ride better then my “Beast of the East”? Did it climb better? Descend faster? I was able to ride his Attitude a couple of times on the same trails that I would ride my M800 and even though his bike cost 3 times as much I did not think the ride was much different but that did not stop me from wanting one.
It was 6 years later that I finally was able to afford a Klein. I found a 1994 Adroit in the paper for $1400. It was my size and it was Gator. The fellow that I bought it from was a team rider for a local bike shop and was selling it for the cost of his new ride. He was going to full suspension.
I brought that bike home, sat it in the living room and just looked at it until my girlfriend, now my wife, made me take it downstairs. I loved the feel of the Adroit and it handled like a dream. Sure, it beat the heck out of me and I ached after each ride but it was a good kind of pain.
I owned that bike till 98 when, shipping it to Georgia, UPS lost it. I was crushed. By then the full suspension craze was at full force so with the insurance money I bought a Specialized Stumpjumper FS. Since then I have owned about every type of bike you can imagine. I flip-flopped between hardtails and FS bikes, geared and SS and all types of tubing. But for some reason I still missed that Klein.Now 10 years later I can find Attitudes and Adroits but it is hard to justify buying them. A friend of mine once said “when you’re young you have all the time to do what you want but not the money and when you’re older you have the money but not the time”.
I think the reason that Kleins command the price they do is not because they are the best riding bike of their day but because they are a legend, a mystical creature that only a few owned new and something we all have wanted at 1 time or another. I have owned 4 since my first Klein and I am now an owner of a 1992 Attitude XTR. Now every time that I ride it, it brings me back to a time when things were simpler. I still get comments about how cool it is even now. There is just something about a Klein that makes your heart beat a little faster and your smile to get a little bigger.
Thanks for reading.
BTW-I am in Chehalis about every 2 weeks and I can still feel the ghost of Gary riding around.
Attachments
Similar threads
