OK, tell me about the Kona Hot...
- Thread starter Little Bob
- Start date
My partner Brian Caulfield did most of the welding. A friend of ours Woody Woodruff did the rest. After we closed Enigma, Brian went on to build bikes under Kavik Bicycles and Woody continued the BMX line under Enigma Racing. We both worked for Frank Wadelton for a number of years building bikes so we have built alot of other peoples frames over the years. It's amazing how intimate the biking industry was back then. Ahhh...the good old days.
The first 853 Hot appeared in the 96 catalogue and should have gone on sale in the autumn of 95, so clearly if you started your company in December 96 you didn’t build the 96 frames. But it was still in the catalogue in 97 and 98, so I guess those were the ones you built.JeffB":dvow8d1q said:My partner Brian Caulfield did most of the welding. A friend of ours Woody Woodruff did the rest. After we closed Enigma, Brian went on to build bikes under Kavik Bicycles and Woody continued the BMX line under Enigma Racing. We both worked for Frank Wadelton for a number of years building bikes so we have built alot of other peoples frames over the years. It's amazing how intimate the biking industry was back then. Ahhh...the good old days.
I always assumed that Tom Teesdale built the Hots only up to the 95 model year and only out of Prestige, but he does say he was involved up until 95 and he does work with 853 now, so maybe it was he who built the 96 Hots, in 1995. And maybe the mention of Altitude Cycles in the 97 catalogue (which would have been produced in early-mid 96?) referred to a new deal that never came off.
Did you build the bikes in one big batch? i.e., there was no ‘custom’ element, it was just ‘US-built’ that was the magic ingredient?
Re: Hot
I think Kona might well help you as an owner with a specific enquiry about your own bike - it's clearly a 96 model with original paint, but if you asked Tech whether it was built by Teesdale or by somebody else, I expect he'd give you an answer. Mind you, we might be able to glean something ourselves from the serial number on the bb shell.haggis":2oo6sgkt said:
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