Very Interesting Roberts 'Renegade' ATB circa 1985...

[legrandefromage]

You have wonder who was looking over whose shoulders back in 1985...

I spy a bit of fillet brazing around the seat clamp and some very nice non standard pencil stays? *EDIT wraparound stays?

The frame builders parts bin was very limited so there will always be similar frames around. It was the skill and imagination of the builder to make theirs stand out.

what? I pressed the edit button...? Oh well - a coupla points:

I should clarify that the MTB frame builders parts bin would have been very limited back then. Most are stock Reynolds with limited truly custom builds. Lost of roadie stuff in the mix too with some careful crafting - see the Roberts /Peugeot thread for this to be taken to its limits: http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewto ... ht=peugeot

 

[mrkawasaki]

Well I was wrong to guess that Roberts didn't have this design in their range - so maybe they could be the designers too. Still, an interesting departure from the classic road frame derivatives of the day. I wonder how the experience of building this led them to the Stratos and the White Spider. Once senses a certain reluctance on the part of Roberts towards off road...

Seeing the Overbury's Puma (which I'm thinking is the ladies version of the Pioneer) backs up the fact that they were building sloping top tubed bikes from 1985 - Andy Powell confirmed this when I was last in their shop. Was that genuine innovation or did they have a shoulder to look over in 1984/5?

Ref. Jack Taylor thread: http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewto ... ght=taylor

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Yep, I can read too... however my hunch is that the bike was designed by someone else, maybe the shop people mentioned, and 'designed' read: built by Roberts. Otherwise, wouldn't Roberts sell a version of their own?? When was the first Roberts-branded ATB/MTB - sometime after this?

It was Chas Roberts who made one of the the first American style Mountain Bikes to be built in Britain? This was at the request of an American customer way back in 1981.
Amateur frame builder Tony Oliver also made himself one which he exhibited at the 1981 York Cycle Show.

Renagade was the bike brand of the "On Your Bike" cycle shop at 22 Duke Hill, SE1, near London Bridge. The Bicycle Action article makes no mention to the bike being designed by Chas Roberts, so if it was they did not use this to promote the bike. The frame is of lugged construction and not like the skillful and sleek lugless construction used on the Roberts' own frames that I remember. Maybe the geometry was copied from a Chas Roberts made bike and the bike produced by someone else. At this time Roberts did have a "special short wheelbase hill climbing model," and Two Wheels Good were retailers for both Ridgeback and Muddy Fox. Either of these British owned companies could have manufactured bikes for them.

As for a possible link between Geoff Apps, David Wrath-Sharman and Chas Roberts? The link was cycling journalist and campaigner Tom Bogdanowicz. He was part of the Cleland and Highpath scene though being American he preferred American style bikes which he got Chas Roberts to Build. Tom must have discussed the latest developments from Cleland and Highpath with Chas. Remember that the mountain bike scene was small, key players followed each others work in the cycling press, saw others bikes on the trails and often met at trade shows and the early mountain bike events.

 

[danson67]

14 1/2" BB, blimey, the 13" one on my Pioneer feels like getting on a horse :shock:

I'd agree with the consensus here, that there's not much Roberts in that frame...I don't remember Chas R getting too involved in all that new-fangled mountainbike stuff until a few years later...when it was selling in better volumes.

I had a riding friend in Liverpool 1987 who had a Renegade, very similar to that, except bright yellow. Like Rod suggested, they'd taken the higher BB of the better UK trail bikes Cleland/Highpath/Overbury's Pioneer/Raleigh (O'Donovan) Midnight Express etc and tacked it into the US Repack clunker downhilling 68 degree parallel geometry of their early Muddy Fox, Stumpy clones. Not good...

I don't know who made it, but it had a very similar ring to the sort of thing Orbit were making and the Saffron/Turmeric/Tarragon (or whatever it was called, Do you remember, Graham?) that Two Wheels Good sold out of Leeds.

All the best,

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

..I don't remember Chas R getting too involved in all that new-fangled mountainbike stuff until a few years later...when it was selling in better volumes.

...I don't know who made it, but it had a very similar ring to the sort of thing Orbit were making and the Saffron/Turmeric/Tarragon (or whatever it was called, Do you remember, Graham?) that Two Wheels Good sold out of Leeds.

All the best,

Hi Dan, for some reason I have never been to Leeds. But I notice that Two Wheels Good of Leeds' adverts of the time say that they can build custom frames.

As for Chas Robert's involvement in mountain bikes, he made what his customers asked for, and did a very good job. I even remember a mountain bike tandem circa 1988. Beautifully made but not much off-road capability.

Makers and designers like Geoff Apps and David Wrath-Sharman and others lived and breathed cycling off-road. Whilst others tried their best to make bikes that met their customers needs with very little first hand knowledge of riding off-road. There was a great deal of playing it safe by copying and cloning going on. The geometry of this bike may be copied from another, if so which?. It may indeed be an amalgam of the designs of others. But possibly it is an interesting if flawed experiment of the kind that made the bikes of this fast evolving era so interesting.