Kona Kilauea 1995 possibly for sale - West Yorkshire

[mazarnold]

I have a 1995 Original Kona Kilauea, 18 inch frame. It's only got 100's of miles on it and apart from the hand grips EVERYTHING is original and in full working order. My husband persuaded me to buy it new but I didn't really take to mountain biking until family came along. I wanted to put some front shockers on it recently as we've started going out more in the last twelve months on family rides, but have been advised not to do this as the frame won't cope, so sadly I need to consider letting it go.

I am in the process of taking offers and I am advised by our local Evans store that it's worth a good amount of money (even what we paid for it - £900) due to its condition, but I am unsure about this? It needs to fund a new bike so I will be careful about what I let it go for. If you would like to make an offer please get in touch.

 

[Canuck]

Re:

You might want to have a look here first

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/wiki/Classif ... _Procedure

 

[MatBH5]

Re:

Hello, if you're not sure of value, try here viewforum.php?f=78 as this thread is for firm prices only.
I shouldn't imagine that the £900 original value will be reflected anymore, but people will n doubt coment on the correct thread.
And your 1995 bike was designed to take front suspension, possibly a little less travel (bounce) than modern forks, but you could get some suitable, I'm sure.
Cheers!

 

[mazarnold]

Sorry, wasn't sure what to do (slightly embarrased now..). Will put a post on the other thread....

 

[secret_squirrel]

Hiya - welcome to Retrobike. don't be embarrased- its an easy mistake.

What MatBH5 said. You are being completely led astray by your local Evan's. You should give serious consideration whether they are trying un-necessarily upsell you to a new bike. (Which is fine - as long as you know that is happening).

The likelihood of it fetching £900 is pretty close to zero. There are plenty of suspension forks that will fit that bike - you could get a good secondhand pair from this site- or a brand new pair of something like these for <£100 fitted. (Note no affliation with the linked shop - just the first one I googled.

Im sure someone will be along in a sec to recommend an exact fork for a 1995 Kilauea - just change the title of your first post to help or ask a mod to do it using the REport post button red exclamation mark bottom right.

If not - post another request in the Wanted forum.

 

[al-onestare]

Hey ho - some pic's of course will help. So, if you can get those uploaded and then start a thread in the xyz how much forum I'm sure you'll get some good feedback

Echoing above, if it's good shape and fairly stock, you should be looking around the £200-300 max (if it's totally pristine).

By the way, you can cope with shocks on that frame but they will need to have small levels of travel compared to today's beasts: 60mm maximum.

 

[konaman1]

Re:

You could get away with 60 or 80mm marzocchi z2 forks on a 95 Kilauea no worrys they often come up on ebay and on here. From 1994 kona corrected their bikes geometrys for suspension forks and very little changed until after the millennium.

 

[mazarnold]

Thanks for your help. Going to look into this further to see what I can get.

 

[hamster]

I run 70mm Z2s on a Kona with identical geometry and it's fine, very neat, sharp handling. Sure, it cannot handle the huge drops that people ride down on 140mm travel bikes. However there is a load of hooey talked by MTB mags that would suggest that anything with less than 6" of travel is unsuitable even to run down to Tesco.

 

[elPedro666]

Re:

I'd go further - with a 70/80mm stem, a 100mm travel fork with a bit of sag will still handle an absolute treat. You really can't go wrong with that frame, it's just absolutely spot on, compared to anything from any era

Bombers always look right on a Kona I think, but that's just personal opinion.

Just a thought though - do you really need suspension at all, regardless of Evans' opinion? If you decide that you do, keep the original forks safe somewhere

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