jamesdak 

So picked up this beast today. Hard to find much out about them except for some listings on the German Ebay site for this "brand". Didn't see one with all the features of this one though. Labeled Mars Trekking. Best I can figure is it's a German "department store" quality bike which of course isn't the same as a department store bike in the U.S.

Anyone see anything like this or have info on it?

Mechanically a mess when I picked it up but the seller was honest and worked with me on it. Spent several hours today sorting it out a bit to get it going again. Triple crankset and 7 speed in the back. Crank is Ofmega, RD and FD are Shimano and the Gripshifts are Sram. Brakes and levers are Promax. Don't know about the front fork or the rear shock. Rear shock/sprin is tagged as 750lbs and the tension is adjustable on the spring. When i picked it up the FD was not shifting and the rear brakes wear totally locked up. BB worked smoothly though with no detectable play. Front disc also was working well. Generator and lights were working too as well as the RD. Tires are holding air just fine but badly dry rotted and cracked. 700 x 38C but they really measured around 34mm wide with my calipers. Room for larger though.

Gave it a quick clean and degrease, some new cables and housing and swapped the too short seatpost for a Rockshox I had. Threw on another saddle for now but I will need to source a more proper upright saddle for this. Hubs turn smoothly but I'll open them up to service them soon too. Bars will need wrapping too. As of now, all brakes are working as is all the shifting. The rear brake cable was totally seized in the housing and the brake lever was too tight and not fully released. Fixed it all. Still figure to put on a new chain and tires.

This will replace a too small AMF Hercules 3 speed I've put a lot into. The AMF is just too small for me. It'll also replace an old Orbea road bike I've got set up for light gravel use. Even with the ruined tires it did well on some short test rides. Smooth on the path and road and did well on gravel and even grass. Purposely hit some pot holes to "test" the suspension and each one was a non event. The bike just soaked up the jolt.


As I picked it up.

How it sits tonight after sorting most of the stuff out. Still more to do though

Need to get a new shift cable and fix this mess that someone did to it.

Rack with pump mount and working light. Threw the Rock Shox on there for the heck of it.

The rear suspension setup

Beefy aluminum frame with the front shock.

Still need to sort out the position of this and wrap it. First bell on any bike of mins since my days in Germany many, many years ago.

DorkDisk

Looks like a Unified Rear Triangle (URT) design popularized by Trek's Y bike, around 97-99 (off the top of my head).

The advantages were: entire drivetrain is on rear triangle; no chain stretch, no varying f derailleur angles, one beefy pivot
The disadvantages were: standing or braking locked out the suspension, design had a falling rate

Eventually URT went to an air shock (rising rate) to "flatten" the spring rate but fully active linkage designs with less compromises soon became available.

That's a nice rack, BTW. Interestingly, many URTs used different materials for the frame and sub-frame. Your frame looks like Al, with a steel swing arm. Many high end URT bikes, reflecting the era, had steel fronts and Al rears.

The most famous of all URTs would be the pivotless Ibis Bow-Ti:

hokiefyd 

That looks interesting. I wonder what the second set of cable stops are on the DS chain stay. Is that for certain types of IGHs? I think some used a push-pull dual cable setup.

jamesdak 

Well, this does appear to be the brand of a large German online store, supposedly Czech made. All I know is for the money and what I want this one for it will work just fine.

Gonna ride it down to the LBS in a few for a new chain and RD cable and bar tape. Those should be the last parts except for the tires.