Help identifying Frame

[kohna]

Very impressive--thanks for all the insights. I wonder if its possible that the dropouts were part of a repair job as well? i.e., someone snapped a der. hanger and decided to replace the pair? One thing I thought odd was that the dropouts have rack mounting holes...but there are no mounting holes up on the seatstays by the bridge, as I've seen in some of the mid-90's Explosifs.

And yeah, I tried tech at Konaworld...apparently they are unable to decipher the model/year from the serial number alone...

Thanks again!

 

[Anthony]

Yes I find that with Tech@konaworld as well - it makes you wonder what the purpose of the serial number can be if it doesn't tell them what type of bike it is. And I still say that if it's just a coincidence that a bike that might well be a 96 Hot has a serial number starting HO96, then it's quite a big coincidence.

Bottom line IMHO is (a) it's a Hot - because no production steel Kona had a down tube two sizes bigger than its top tube, (b) if Tom Teesdale tells you he didn't build it, then Altitude Cycles must have, (c) in which case it's a 96 Hot because of the cable routing. If you come to the same conclusion, maybe you might consider getting Gil_M on this site to make you some 96 decals to set everything to rights?

Incidentally, I believe Altitude Cycles no longer exists and my attempts to find out anything about them from people where they operated in Chico, California met with a wall of silence for some reason.

 

[kohna]

You've sold me on it

Thanks for all your help Anthony et al.

This is my first introduction to the 'retrobike' community and I must say I'm very excited to learn more!

Cheers,
Kevin

 

[kohna]

Just as a follow up... I uncovered more details about the frame in question verifying it is indeed a '96 Hot (as intuited by Anthony above). An e-mail from Tom Teesdale confirms he didn't built. However, I did find an image of another '96 Hot that appears to have the same mysterious rear dropouts:

Interestingly, it seems that not all of the '96's had these dropouts. For example,

I also have been trying to track down info on Altitude Cycles, but they seem to have disappeared into thin air!

Thanks again to all for the help.