Silverfish
Senior Retro Guru
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Yes
I know it's not a Yeti!
But this bike is quite possibly what has rekindled my love affair with 90's mountain bikes and rebuilding some of the iconic bikes from BITD. I ended up with a lot of my previous builds focussing on my very earliest days of MTB - 1986 onwards and tried to build many of the bikes I slobbered over in MBUK but could never afford. I've built and/or owned multiple FRO's, ARC's, Yak's, Ultimates, AS's, AS LT's, a Treefrog and a very early Sweetheart Cycles Motocruiser. That's not trying to brag. Just trying to illustrate that I mostly disappeared under a pre XTR retro passion which culminated in Shimano Deerhead, early Cooks and lots of Bullseye. It got to be a very expensive habit which is probably why I disappeared for a number of years
But for me personally the mountain bike heyday was very much the early 90's. And me moving to San Diego California in 1993 almost perfectly coincided with when the US mountain bike scene went absolutely bonkers and so many awesome bike designs were released between 1992 and 1995. I still used to read every mountain bike mag out there, but I still couldn't afford those bikes back then either
Seems to be a bit of a theme developing
I worked in a pretty cool shop in SD - we sold Pro Flex, Trek, Spesh, Gary Fisher, Diamond Back, Barracuda (when they were cool) and the odd one off fancy custom MTB. But we were nowhere near as cool as the the Cantina mountain bike shop on the other side of Sorrento Valley. Those boys stocked Yeti, Intense, GT, Mountain Cycle and pretty much every exotica going but they must have sold Manitou full sussers at one point because a guy that bought one there joined one of our evening rides.
And wow! Bonkers expensive but also so so cool. They actually rode phenomenally well, one of the best of the early design FS mountain bikes and crazy light considering the travel. Which is why not many of them have stood the test of time - Manitou FS bikes were pretty prone to cracking. I think they probably built them a little too light...
But I've always loved the design and always wanted one. But finding one that wasn't cracked was always the challenge. Then I found this...
I know it's not a Yeti!
But this bike is quite possibly what has rekindled my love affair with 90's mountain bikes and rebuilding some of the iconic bikes from BITD. I ended up with a lot of my previous builds focussing on my very earliest days of MTB - 1986 onwards and tried to build many of the bikes I slobbered over in MBUK but could never afford. I've built and/or owned multiple FRO's, ARC's, Yak's, Ultimates, AS's, AS LT's, a Treefrog and a very early Sweetheart Cycles Motocruiser. That's not trying to brag. Just trying to illustrate that I mostly disappeared under a pre XTR retro passion which culminated in Shimano Deerhead, early Cooks and lots of Bullseye. It got to be a very expensive habit which is probably why I disappeared for a number of years
But for me personally the mountain bike heyday was very much the early 90's. And me moving to San Diego California in 1993 almost perfectly coincided with when the US mountain bike scene went absolutely bonkers and so many awesome bike designs were released between 1992 and 1995. I still used to read every mountain bike mag out there, but I still couldn't afford those bikes back then either
Seems to be a bit of a theme developing I worked in a pretty cool shop in SD - we sold Pro Flex, Trek, Spesh, Gary Fisher, Diamond Back, Barracuda (when they were cool) and the odd one off fancy custom MTB. But we were nowhere near as cool as the the Cantina mountain bike shop on the other side of Sorrento Valley. Those boys stocked Yeti, Intense, GT, Mountain Cycle and pretty much every exotica going but they must have sold Manitou full sussers at one point because a guy that bought one there joined one of our evening rides.
And wow! Bonkers expensive but also so so cool. They actually rode phenomenally well, one of the best of the early design FS mountain bikes and crazy light considering the travel. Which is why not many of them have stood the test of time - Manitou FS bikes were pretty prone to cracking. I think they probably built them a little too light...
But I've always loved the design and always wanted one. But finding one that wasn't cracked was always the challenge. Then I found this...
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