kona frame difference..
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OrangeRetro
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looking at the 1997 catalogue.. Ok a year later then your Fire Mountain, but the Cindercone frame was 4.5lbs and the Fire Mountain 4.7lbs. A very small difference, not sure what the difference was though? Maybe a butted seatube or something?
OrangeRetro
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Errrr.. just noticed, even more bizarre, the 1997 Explosif frame was 4.0lbs but the Kilauea was 3.9lbs??? :shock:
Why was the Kilauea lighter then the Explosif? :?
Why was the Kilauea lighter then the Explosif? :?
Not bizarre, I think, although both are understatements - but I haven't yet got my hands on a 97 Explosif to prove it, owing to my complete incompetence the other day, curses, curses, curses, curses. The weights may be before painting or something like that, or just lies. The genuine weight for a size 18 97 Kilauea is 4.3, Lava Dome 4.8. If the Explosif is c45 grammes heavier than the Kilauea, that could well be due to the bi-ovalised top and down tubes in Columbus Max being slightly fatter overall than the round tubes of Columbus Cyber used on the Kilauea. The two frames are otherwise identical.OrangeRetro":1ehyade7 said:
Although the Explosif is this tiny fraction heavier, the bi-ovalised tubes should be slightly stiffer, so it should in theory be a faster race bike than the Kilauea. The 98 853 Explosif is very slightly heavier again, 4.45, but probably has a further stiffness advantage to justify it, although by that time I guess they'd given up designing them as race bikes in favour of the Kula and King Kahuna.
To go back to the original question, I've never seen the tube specs of the 96 bikes, nor of the 97 Fire Mountain, but it looks as though the FM and Hahanna may have been upgraded for 97, so that year isn't necessarily a guide for 96. All seat tubes were butted, so the description 'butted cromoly' for the 96 Fire Mountain could mean that the top and down tubes were plain gauge, presumably 0.9, whereas the 'double-butted cromoly' description of the Lava Dome/Cinder Cone frames probably means that they had the same db top and down tubes as the 97 frames - 0.9/0.6/0.9. That would account for a difference of c0.2lbs or perhaps more, and also give a more lively feel to the LD/CC.
I'm just saying it could be, but I don't know for sure. Another possibility is that the top and down tubes were db 1.0/0.7/1.0, as that would also explain the weight difference between the FM and the LD/CC. Why not ask [email protected] ?speedplay":3tr4ct9p said:
The standard of the Fire Mountain varied, but was often less than this.cce":nfj28g24 said:
The Lava Dome and the Cinder Cone were generally identical to one another after the early years, they certainly were in 96, 97 and 98
The Cinder Cone never had butted stays - but funniy enough the Lava Dome had butted stays in 2002 (but at no other time)
The point about the geometry applies from 94 onwards - i.e., the FM stayed the same, but the higher end frames went a half inch longer from 1994 and have stayed the same ever since (even though stems have got shorter!)
