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GT BIKE RIDER":1usnvjuc said:

Interesting topic.
Id like to add some info to this and the early konas.Here is my Tbg cascade lava dome.Tbg first offering was the cascade fire mountain and lava dome in early 1988.Then later in the year they changed to kona.

Now as for sloping top tube.The bike states designed by joe murray.
Now look at the pic,if that is not a sloping top tube ,what is?.looks just like the green explosif.

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I would still say that your Lava Dome was most likely designed by JM at the same time as the '1988' Kona range, after he started working with Paul Brodie. And that the Cascade Fire Mountain and Lava Dome that had very short head tubes, and thus virtually no top tube slope, were earlier designs. How much earlier we don't know, but likely before he started working with Brodie.

Seeing beautys like those ^^ make me want to do the firemountain properly , would look awesome next to the latest Konas at work

My 92 explosif has a tbg sticker in the same place on the bottom of the seattube :? It can't be a 91 as the rack mounts are in the seatstays instead of being brazed on top .

Mine is also splatter free just about.
Some DIY splatter that is a bit too thickly applied above that too, i assume to hide previous scratches to frame

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THE KONA TIMELINE

1988
Kona is founded by Dan Gerhard and Jacob Heilbron, with offices opening in Blaine, Washington and Vancouver, BC. First bicycles are introduced as Cascade, but changed later in the year to Kona. Joe Murray is the first bike designer/product manager.
First race team consists of Joe Murray and Dave Turner. Joe is inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.
Distributors in England, France and Sweden bring Kona to Europe.
Kona introduces the first set of front/rear MTB tires: Maximum/Reaction designed by Joe Murray. Other MTB tire sets introduced include Break/Enter, Equilibrium/Propulsion and Lumpy/Gravy.
Grassroots racing program introduced in October. More than 3,000 riders have raced for Kona since the inception of the program.

1989
Project Two, the first straight leg MTB production fork is introduced. Throughout the Kona range today, there are more than 10 versions of this fork produced for 26”, 29” and 700c wheel mountain and asphalt bikes.
Ex-roadie Bruce Spicer (now Brodie) races on the Kona Factory MTB team.

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sinnerman":1nlre0bi said:

Quote:
In 1987, Paul Brodie began producing frames for his own company. Dan Gerhard formed The Bicycle Group and handled Brodie’s worldwide distribution. Pippin Osborne and Peter Hamilton founded Syncros bicycle components in the same year. In 1988, Jacob Heilbron and Joe Murray joined with Dan Gerhard to start Kona Mountain Bikes. Doug Lafavor joined Kona in 1990.


Quote:
Dan Gerhard is once again a US-resident, the token American in this nomination. He heads up Kona’s world headquarters in Ferndale, Washington, about 100 miles north of Seattle. Doug Lafavor is the technical designer in Kona’s product group. Jacob Heilbron is the COB of KonaWorld, Kona’s design center in Vancouver.

http://www.completesite.com/mbhof/page. ... 4&pageid=6

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It's interesting how great minds think alike. In that history of the beginnings of Rocky Mountain written by Jacob Heilbron, it completely slipped his mind to mention Grayson Bain. If you look at the otherwise similar short history of the beginnings of Rocky Mountain that Grayson Bain wrote, it completely slipped his mind to mention Jacob Heilbron. Oh happy, happy days.

Jacob Heilbron also casually claims there to have invented the sloping top tube. Yeah, yeah, just like all the other things he invented, such as er, um, well, the name? You have to admit though, Kona, Hawaii, volcanoes etc is a good marketing concept.

sinnerman":3eq8wqtq said:

we are still left with the Question........who was the taiwanese company responsible for assembling the frames before paul did his thing with the brazing and splatter paint.

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Many Konas around that time had T serial numbers, as did GT Bike Rider's Cascade. He says the flat top tube Cascades had F numbers, and so did Konas from 90/91. I would assume that the F frames were built in Fairly, i.e. Giant. Joe@Konaworld said the T stood for Taiwan, rather than a builder identification, but if as suggested here there is another TBG that stands for Taiwan Bicycle Group, then maybe they built the T frames.

Anthony has a good point on the builder of the frames.Naming the brand Kona i think fit right in with Cascade.Because the mountain range from canada down the western us states are named csacade range.So when they started with names like lavadome,firemountain once they change the name to Kona it fit right.I had heard 2 reasons why they changed it.One ,while visiting hawaii and the other was that the cascade name was allready being used.How true i dont know.