How accurate are catalogs?

[BerthaPog]

I saw a ‘94 at York in ‘23 with round down tube, I was more struck by the somewhat agricultural joint between top tube and seat tube.

 

[benjabbi]

I think that's a 96. Came with Magura HS 11s and that looks like the edge of a Columbus tubing decal and the 96 blue main decals.
But yes that's not the cleanest looking joint is it.

 

[Takingabreak]

The dawes 96 catalogue shows a yellow edge in the main pictures that must be an earlier frame painted yellow with crudely photoshopped canti brakes so that they kind of look like v brakes. The other pictures show v brakes but not the whole bike. I guess something was going on with dawes at the time where they weren’t quite ready to start selling 96 edges when the catalogue came out. The spec sheet in the catalogue is correct though

Edit - maybe it was just that the m739 v brakes weren’t available early enough for the catalogue

 

[FluffyChicken]

I saw a ‘94 at York in ‘23 with round down tube, I was more struck by the somewhat agricultural joint between top tube and seat tube.

View attachment 975412

That's a MAX-OR join. It's styled it out ;-). Looks the same on all the Max-OR years on the Explosif.

 

[FluffyChicken]

Quite often, I think mention already, the catalogues are made July-ish, ready for the Aug/Sept new model release.
I know often the new forks hadn't turned up, you'll often see last year's model on.
Similar for seat post etc than change a bit over the year.
The early Rocky mountain catalogues are riddled with it.
The 92 Altitude is full XT, last year's fork, wrong post iirc. When it came and is listed as having full XTR, which is quite a difference.
I think bomber forks when they released caused similar problems etc. 93 to 93 Rockshox similar.

So they can only photo what they have.

 

[DaiP]

I remember having a Giant Cadex ALM 1 back in around 1993ish that was supposed to be a mix of Exage and Deore LX. When the bike shop got it out of the box it had a full Deore LX groupset (no Exage parts). I remember being well happy with that.

 

[Once A Hero]

A couple of points to note here, catalogues tend to come out quite well in advance of the actual product hitting the market, and they are typically issued with a caveat that specifications are subject to change without notice.

Here’s a couple of examples from my stable.

1992 Marin Indian Fire Trail
- Catalogue only shows it in green, no mention of other colours.
- I picked up mine on February 8th 1992 - in purple
- Seat post shown in black but was actually polished alloy from the Marin Lite group (which they reference in the catalogue description).
- Catalogue confirms specs subject to change without notice






1993 Specialized Stumpjumper FS
- Catalogue clearly shows forks with black crown
- Bike I rode in late ‘93 had silver crown, and I’ve even seen mint original versions for sale still with the silver crown - were they ever black?
- Catalogue is dated 1992 and confirms specifications subject to change without notice

 

[al-onestare]

I saw a ‘94 at York in ‘23 with round down tube, I was more struck by the somewhat agricultural joint between top tube and seat tube.

View attachment 975412

Show me a better example of joining an ovalised wafer thin tube with a circular one, from this era, as a mass production frame.

To the question, unreliable. Pictures were taken 4-5 months before the bikes were put into production, so many frames would be repaints of current models with makeshift decals, and sometimes the specced parts were not available.

There're a great reference point but shouldn't be treated as gospel.

 

[BerthaPog]

Show me a better example of joining an ovalised wafer thin tube with a circular one, from this era, as a mass production frame.

In my mind, it looks like a failure long before trying to join tubes together - my “embedded software engineer” mind is asking why didn’t they spec a seat tube to match properly?

 

[al-onestare]

In my mind, it looks like a failure long before trying to join tubes together - my “embedded software engineer” mind is asking why didn’t they spec a seat tube to match properly?

Can you imagine how costly that'd be to have the right sized oval, at the right joint position per frame size?