PatTheSlat 

Picked up this late 80s Nashbar 5000 bike and it has a seat stay arrangement I've never seen before, with one skinny tube from the brake up to the seat cluster. Anyone ever seen a frame built like this before? Wondering who might have made this frame for Nashbar.

HelpSingularity 

It's called wishbone seat stays. Fairly common on '80s mountain bikes. And some road bikes as well.

juvela

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serial placement & format should provide clue as to perpetrator...


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merziac

And not normally seen on frames from the likes of Nashbar.

Whose signature is on the chainstays?

There's some uncharacteristic quality going on despite the production welding we see here as well.

merziac

The wishbone/monostay was pretty exclusive on road bikes, Andy at Strawberry did many/most of his later ones this way, Eisentraut, Colin Laing too and a few others

Elephant as well.

Mine




Andy's cousin.

79pmooney

Dave Levy of TiCycles (and probably others) do the same with ti bikes only using uni-crown style seat stays instead of using a cast or fabricated crown. My first TiCycles has his usual on it except I had him flip the brake inset around so the brake is forward of the seatstay and the back looks a little cleaner.

Second bike, Jessica J of my avatar photo, I asked Dave to run regular full length seatstays for a clean, track-like look in my initial phone call to get a place on his schedule. (Thinking I'll flip the brake the same way.) I clean forgot about the seat stays and later realized I needed the brake caliper as far back and close to the rim high point as I could get to minimize rim height changes as I moved the wheel for different cog sizes. I was at TiCycles for something else around mid-build. Dave ducks in back and hands me the bare frame, mostly completed, with a pair of beautiful full seat stays welded fastback. "Oh yeah!"

icemilkcoffee 

The 1989 Nishiki Tri-A and Altron both have this type of mono rear stay

Dylansbob 

The signature on the chainstay will be Arnie? Nashbar, the founder/owner. All his bikes back in the 80s/90s had his signature on them. I grew up near enough in the midwest, made the pilgrimage to the store in Youngstown, OH. If you rode a bike in IN,OH, western PA, you saw a lot of their bikes and received their catalog.

I'd guess it at '89/'90. I believe there was a Mangusta (Mongoose's short lived roadbike line) model that was identical.

1simplexnut

The french did an alloy version back in the 80s ? Vitus 787 (from memory)

Lattz

Gazelle Champion Mondial AA



Diamant (Belguim, not East Germany)


They are not really common on Italian steel bikes, but with the dawn of the carbon age, Colnago made plenty of models with alu mainframe and carbon monostay, Bianchi, while no plenty but also had min. one model in this construction.

bulgie 

The Nash uses a commonly available casting, made in Taiwan I believe — Long Shen or Everest? Don't remember.
I used a fair number of them on custom TT, pursuit and Tri-bikes in the '90s, example here:


That kind got a tapered monostay, I think it started life as a R-O-R chainstay. The plain straight mono on the Nash looks a bit naive to my jaded eye.

I preferred the kind with no casting though, just "unicrown" style, seatstays bent to meet the mono-stay. Here's one I used on my own track bike, with a bi-ovalized monostay, oval up-down at the top, oval side-to-side at the bottom:

Don't blame me for the paint job. I told the painter to do whatever he wanted (mistake!)

I also used that style on a track sprint bike that was used to get Silver at World Championships, and another that was used to win 3 or 4 Gold medals at Natz (I forget how many), plus went to two Olympic games... where the guy got eliminated in the first round. But it's an honor just to make the team!

Mark B

Lattz

I don't know how you posted these but it refuses any efforts to press "like"... just nothing happens... but both are super cool! And while the paintjob of the lower might seem silly its not that bad, plus that top one would make plenty of things look silly I guess.

bulgie 

Keep trying, I live for your likes!

Lattz

Yeah, I'm sure, that's my like is appreaciation you really need.... apart from it, I think either my PC has some slight brain damage, or the site.

lonesomesteve

Velo Orange currently has three production steel frames in their line-up with wishbone seatstays: the Pass Hunter, the Piolet and the Neutrino Mini-Velo. Here's the Pass Hunter:


Velo Orange Pass Hunter

john m flores 

I have a Serotta from the early 90s with similar construction and with Tange Prestige tubing.

unworthy1

I think there's some temporary glitch in the "likes" matrix today, haven't experienced that hitch before but I also can't get it to work...might be Mac-specific?
I'm sure this'll be fixed and we can all express how much we "like" Mark B. in a day or so...

at least the emojis work!

Mr. 66

I did have a carbon wishbone Marin. It was a very comfortable ride, I sold it to 'discodancer' I did not know if he has it rebuilt yet. It went out the door as bare frame.

carbon fork, carbon wishbone and Columbus Thron Verona