1997 GT Edge Aero

[Blackbike]

Hello Freeman and welcome to Retrobike. Your in good company here with very skilled and talented people who are always ready and willing to assist and answer questions.
All that being said I am down with some kind of flu and I will reply to your post in more detail later.

Have a wonderful evening and my very best wishes: Mike

 

[Frankenorange]

Get well soon, Mike.

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

Get well soon Mike

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

Sorry it's the wrong bike but I seem to remember you starting a build. I can delete if its cluttering up the place

 

[SeeingisBelievingGTMuseum]

Not guessing, why do you think it's not Reynolds tubing, the only non hydroformed tubing is the head tube and possibly the top tube.
Reynolds was one of the sponsors for GT's 1996 Olympic "Superbikes" along with Mavic, and Shimano.
View attachment 952058
The Reynolds decal tells a story of collaboration on design, materials, and manufacturing as Reynolds manufactures hydroformed tubing
Quote from Reynolds website...
"The 6061 alloy is very suitable for use in hydro-formed shapes due to its high ductility, and can also be used in conjunction with butted profiles subject to design parameters.
6061 is available as hydroformed and/or butted tubing for OEM customers only."

Now let's look at the business case.
(1). Reynolds would not put their name on the bike if they did not make the tubing and the tubing is hydroformed.

(2). Tooling for hydroforming is expensive and all that tooling and the processes are proprietary and held closely by the manufacture.

(3). I would say the concept of the GT aero bikes started in 1994 because of the time required to finalize the design and to manufacture the the tooling to hydroform the tubing had to be complete no later than June 1995 to manufacture tubing in time to build Atlanta prototypes in early 1996.

(4). The production bikes had to be built from Reynolds hydroformed tubing because of the lead time from the Atlanta Olympics to the start of manufacture of those bikes in late 1996 to early 1997 and all that tooling had to be paid for by spreading the cost out through the production bikes. I would also say the production bikes were cooked into the stew in the very beginning as it makes good business sense.

(5). David Tiemeyer was a graduate of the University of Michigan with a degree in engineering. You make him sound like a production welder, his involvement was much more than peripheral.

My GT has a build date of 06 97 and S/N in the very low 500's

I'm looking forward to your response.
Best Wishes: Mike

I worked for GT 92-7 back in the days when they 1st started road bikes. I own 89 GT's 16 of them road bikes with many of them past team road bikes. I can honestly tell you I own more bikes produced in the GT Tech Shop than anyone else on the planet. I have a GT Saturn Team Titanium road bike frame that has original Reynolds 853 decals in it. The tubing under the paint is not Reynolds...it's Sandvik Ti. The people paying the money get their decals on the tubes Reynolds....FACT...that doesn't mean that's the brand of tubing the frames made out of. Happened all the time on top road frames back in the old days. 7/11 never raced on frames made by Huffy or Murray either but their decals were on the bikes.
in the 93-94 era GT had a lot more going on with Alcoa in sourcing their aluminum tubing than others. By 97-8 they were using Easton aluminum for most of their US produced frames. In fact, they never used Reynolds aluminum on any bikes sold in their catalog. Again...I've got a GT Saturn Team Ti road bike with the exact same decals pictured above and an 853 seat tube decal and there's not a spec of steel in the frame...magnets don't stick.

 

[Frankenorange]

Is that a fact?

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

Allegedly.

 

[Blackbike]

I worked for GT 92-7 back in the days when they 1st started road bikes. I own 89 GT's 16 of them road bikes with many of them past team road bikes. I can honestly tell you I own more bikes produced in the GT Tech Shop than anyone else on the planet. I have a GT Saturn Team Titanium road bike frame that has original Reynolds 853 decals in it. The tubing under the paint is not Reynolds...it's Sandvik Ti. The people paying the money get their decals on the tubes Reynolds....FACT...that doesn't mean that's the brand of tubing the frames made out of. Happened all the time on top road frames back in the old days. 7/11 never raced on frames made by Huffy or Murray either but their decals were on the bikes.
in the 93-94 era GT had a lot more going on with Alcoa in sourcing their aluminum tubing than others. By 97-8 they were using Easton aluminum for most of their US produced frames. In fact, they never used Reynolds aluminum on any bikes sold in their catalog. Again...I've got a GT Saturn Team Ti road bike with the exact same decals pictured above and an 853 seat tube decal and there's not a spec of steel in the frame...magnets don't stick.

Olympic sponsors enter a contract to supply "deliverables" per a schedule, in the 1996 summer Olympic cycling events the sponsors were, GT Bicycles, Shimano, Reynolds, and Mavic.
Olympic cycling refers to the specific cycling events held at the Olympic Games, which are a subset of the events organized by the UCI. This is professional racing (for the first time in 1996).
Reynolds tubing was used as the optics of subbing in someone else's tube set would not be good...
So the timeline comes into play again. To build the production bikes for 1997 there's simply no reason to find another supplier of shaped tubing of similar specification when your supply side is already sorted out.
Reynolds tubing was used: Mike