Reduced Rare Custom Brent Trimble owned Kestrel MXZ

Elfman

Bontrager Fan
Having a hard time letting this one go, but must thin the herd.

This is a rare MXZ. Ken Nobi, a veteran MTB racer of the Santa Cruz area sold it to me last year, and he used to race for Kestrel. This frame was given to him by Brent Trimble, and used to be owned by Brent. (I Facebook DM'ed Brent Trimble and he stated it looked familiar to him, but couldn't recall if he owned it, but his memory was fuzzy.) It has a custom paint job, with initials M/B just above the bottom bracket, which I presume to be the painter. Matte "dinosaur bone" on the back half, that gives way to a gloss dusty blue on the front triangle. Measures 21" C-T and just a bit more than 17" C-C. Ken told me that this bike was not just custom in its paint scheme, but apparently was a bit lighter than the standard MXZ of the same size. I can't prove this, as I don't know what the standard frame of this size weighs.

Frame still retains some of the pieces of a Deore XT threaded headset in the headtube, and I have the rest of the parts and will include them with the frame. Headset is 1". Front derailleur and rear dropout bolt-on pieces still intact. The rear hub spacing is 132mm, so I presume this is meant for the earlier 130mm hubs, but I could be mistaken. The bolt-on dropouts sit proud on the inside of the frame, and if you had thinner stock of these replaceable dropouts to match the frame spacing I think you could do 135mm. But as it stands now, I think its 130mm and I wouldn't try to squeeze 135s in there for fear of creating stress cracks in the rear triangle.

This was a rider, and Ken raced it after Brent rode it himself, so the paint is no longer perfect, chipped in some places, especially around the bottom bracket. The headtube paint or the tube itself has a few cracks, I can't tell if these are surficial or deeper, but I took pics of them here.

I'm having a hard time letting this go, as I had plans to build it up and it does appear to be quite rare. I saw another standard MXZ sell on facebook for $500 a few weeks ago, but I know pricing on these is quite variable, and I'm not out to gouge fellow retrobikers.

Reduced to $850.

Paypal F&F or pay fees. Buyer pays shipping. IMG_20230916_130956_700.jpg
 
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Update: upon inquiry from a few prospective buyers, I examined the head tube further. Looks like the cracks are surficial, in the thick paint and not in the carbon/resin. I removed the headset cups and scraped off some paint where there was cracking, and it does not appear the crack is in the frame. Additionally, the heat tube is sleeved with metal, which is also not cracked. IMG_20230921_180444_373.jpg
IMG_20230921_180502_137.jpg
IMG_20230921_180603_452.jpg
 
Trying to.upload the pic with the paint scraped off, and the file size is too large, so will take another pic today of slightly lower resolution and upload.
 
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