96 Kona Kula my dream bike is finally mine!

Monkeeee01

Retro Guru
Hi all,

Just wanted to share with you my joy of finally finding and building my dream bike.

I have been a huge Kona fan since 95/96 and the bike I always wanted was the 96 Kula but could never afford one when it came out and have only ever seen one on Ebay back in 2004 which I couldn't afford.

Some of you might remember my previous posts about a 95 Kula frame I bought which was battered and some peeps on here recomended not to ride because it looked like the seat tube had been damaged and welded again so I sold it on.

Then I bought a 96 Lava dome and built that up but still always longed for the Kula.

One day magas posted a few pics of the 96 Kula he found on German ebay and another retrobike dude posted a reply saying he had the same frame in a friends shed!

So I contacted this legendary retrobike dude and haggled with him to sell the frame and eventually I wore him down and we swapped frames and I gave him some wonga as well and I finally had my dream frame

Doug I still can't tell you how greatful I am!

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So gradually over the next few months I have built it up out of mixture of my old parts and some new.

It's pretty much finished now I just want a pair of middleburn cranks and rings, a pair of crossmax and maybe a new seatpost but the only 27.0 seatpost I can find that is as light or lighter is tune carbon which is like £179

The other crazy thing is as I mentioned before the only time I have ever seen a 96 kula on ebay was in 2004 and if you look at the last two picture's below you can see the photo from that auction (I like to save photo's of cool bikes I could never afford).

I am absoultly sure that this is the same frame as if you look you can see the two small chips to the paint on the top tube 1 above the "u" in Kula and the other slightly to the left are excatly the same on this photo and on my frame. How random is that? I looked at the date stamp for the file on my pc and its from 2004

So here she is I hope you all like her she is my absolute dream bike and I am never letting her go!

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Nice!

Prefer the SID's but with the Thomson stem, King HS, and Hope SP clamp. Not liking the red...

Looks like the frame has some kind of hose guide halfway down the TT?
 
Well done, I far prefer your build to the SID version. Plenty of black, just what that frame needs.
 
Thanks dude, Yeah I think it looks better black and M952 xtr components.

I like the sids in blue but I much prefer the pace and sids are flexy and don't have remote lockout so the pace win hands down.
 
mikesnowdon":tdxmn3iw said:
Nice!

Looks like the frame has some kind of hose guide halfway down the TT?

Yeah the frame is designed for magura hydralic rim brakes so it has the hose guides. I just run the V brake cabling through it and it has a little black clip on the top to stop the cabling bashing the TT
 
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