Chicago Al 

Hey everyone!

I joined BF back in 2009, and the first vintage bike I bought was a 1986 Miyata 110 mixte, which CB400Bill kindly helped me acquire from its original owner in Michigan. That bike went with my older daughter to college that fall and she still has it after all these years.

I have bought and sold several other Miyatas since then, still have a 1985 Pro in my own stable and today I bought a Trail Runner converted to SS as an urban commuter for my other daughter.

When I began the vintage bike hobby I quickly found that the 80s-early 90s Miyata catalogs were online, courtesy of a man named Hernan 'Nana' Burgos, who was Miyata's sales rep for Canada. He was evidently retired with time on his hands and a computer enthusiast, so he had not only scanned in all the catalogs he still had, he also had a personal blog of his adventures in the bike trade and much else. In one anecdote he stated that Miyata was part of Matsu****a (Panasonic) which might explain the electronics company's line of bicycles.

Anyway, I just went looking for that Trail Runner, which I think is about a 1990 model, but the MiyataCatalogs.com site is gone! It would not surprise me if Mr Burgos is as well as he was getting on in years back the late 2000s.

Surely someone else copied his pages and they're available? Anyone have an idea? T-Mar?

HTupolev

I've got a copy of the 1983 catalog on my PC.

Chicago Al 

I have 1984 myself, though only 11 pages...not sure why as I don't think I ever owned a 1984. Bulgier.net has this one as well.

Googling shows a number of options but they all seem to refer back to the miyatacatalogs.com site.

Then there is Pinterest, which has completely screwed up web searching as far as I'm concerned.

HTupolev

Let's see if I can upload it...

rgvg

From a technical pov it seems his domain registration has expired. He may still have an online presence and I tried letting him know it's offline. I received a reply saying he will renew it but that was last friday, and it hasn't happened yet. Of course it may not have been him replying at all as I was just guessing it was his account was contacting. I understand once a domain name expires you have between 2 weeks to 30 days to redeem it or someone else can register it. I just hope the registrar is not charging extortionate fees for redemption. I think we're coming up on 30 days pretty soon now.

There was another thread here a few weeks ago and the thread starter said he'd saved an archive.

John Nolan 

I have reconstructed the catalogues as PDFs, but I haven't placed them anywhere for access...I thought I'd wait and see if the site is reactivated.

T-Mar

I have personal copies of the 1981-1991 literature, plus a few others and several price lists. If you post pictures of the Trail Runner, we can likely identify the year. Also, assuming it is Miyata manufacture, the serial number should allow us to determine the year.

I don't believe Miyata was ever a part of M-a-t-s-u-s-h-i-t-a, but Panasonic's owner did own shares in Miyata and was reportedly the largest shareholder for a number of decades.

cb400bill

Chicago Al 

1985 (I think) Miyata Trail Runner, as found, built up by previous owner


Daughter's 1986 Miyata 100 Mixte, as found in 2009, near mint from the original owner. Daughter still has it, made a few changes, and it has a LOT more miles on it now.


Thanks for the replies everyone! Above are photos the first and the most recent Miyatas I've bought.

Glad to hear the miyatacatalogs.com site may yet be revived, and I'm glad people more alert than me saved and archived the catalogs. Including the Wayback Machine, which I should have thought to check. It's difficult to see the catalogs there, though, the site is slow and some pages are at low resolution.

And of course T-Mar would have all the actual paper literature!

Mr Burgos had a few sites up, and this one for his anecdotes is still there though not updated recently: vintagemiyatabicycles.blogspot.com. I wouldn't say that all of his stories are 'incredible but true' but he seems like a charming guy, and I kinda wish I had dropped him an email to say thanks for putting the catalogs up. That was very generous of him and I bet he had no idea so many vintage bike nerds would be poring over them years later. Maybe I can still write him.

Here's where he states that Miyata was 'part of' Panasonic. Though of course this is likely a simplification, might it suggest the hand of Miyata on the Panasonic line, say the frames?

"A long time ago I received a phone call from the lawyer of Mazda in Canada, He asked me, as Canadian Representative of Miyata Bicycles ,if they could use the name Miata for their cars. I answered him that I had to contact Mr.Hideo Miyata in Chigasaki, Japan to ask for permission. I thought that Miyata would ask for some kind of payment for the use of the Trade Mark"Miyata" that sound like Miata. I phoned my friend ,Hideo Miyata, and explained the situation to him. He replied don't worry. Let them use the name. We are part of Matsu****a Corporation and they use our electronic components in their cars. A very simple answer that I understood with no major questioning. Japanese Companies are very loyal to their associates and work together in harmony.

Incredible but true,
Best regards.
Hernan P.Burgos(Nano Burgos)"

Sadly when I went to insert the above photos, a choice I was offered was from 'my albums,' which are still there, but empty. I had probably uploaded 100 or more photos here, don't even know what they all were so no way to restore them.

ola

Great!
Did you find any way to share them?
The site are an archive.org (form jan 2018) as well.

tsmorr

I've been meaning to mount a full-scale search, somewhere I have some CD-Rs with my old collection of PDFs on it. I'm gonna guess I have the early 90s one as I have an early 90s Miyata I was trying to date (I'm the only owner, but I got it when they were clearing out their NA warehouse or whatever).

John Nolan 

I'll post them to a website I have later this week.

cinco

For the past 15 years I've been saving local copies of catalogs that might come in handy someday, so I have '74 and '81-90. If it becomes necessary for me to dump them somewhere just let me know.

John Nolan 

I've put up the Miyata catalogues I reconstructed from the Internet Archive here.

ola

Might be time to copy that CD-R before they rotten away. Have had many CD-Rs in the pasts that simply didn't read anymore...

Thank you so much! It's beautiful made!
Be a bit careful though so the big PDF (~150mb) doesn't eat all bandwidth on your webhost. If it's a problem maybe you can share it on issuu(.com) or google drive or something like that.

ola

A bit off-topic but can anyone help me id this one? I saved it before it got thrown away. Not much is original.
The serial is TU36469 (the 9 might be something else, really hard to read) and the color on the bottom bracket shell is the most correct.

When I searched the catalagues a Valley runner from 1989 or a Sport cross from 1990 seems most right. The sticker on the Valley runner doesn't make sense and the fork on the Sport cross doesn't fit. Mine is also made for 559 wheels not 700c.

My plan is to build it mostly from used parts and have it for my daily commuter (20km one way).

Ideas?

Tried to post images here but I couldn't (since I'm new here). Put it to this album instead (You'll have to copy paste it): photos.app.goo.gl/53hx7vBHbpxLVpND8

Chr0m0ly 

ryansu

OP Here is the catalog shot I saved for the 86 trail runner I picked up last year and then let go earlier this year (stupid unemployment) I really liked that bike. I also had a 79 Miyata 912 that I really liked and also passed on, someday I will buy and keep a nice Miyata


. I a

cinco

I have the '74, '81, and '82 catalogs if you'd like to add them to your site:
1974: TinyUpload.com - best file hosting solution, with no limits, totaly free
1981: TinyUpload.com - best file hosting solution, with no limits, totaly free
1982: TinyUpload.com - best file hosting solution, with no limits, totaly free

John Nolan 

Great! I'll put those up tomorrow.

ola

Thanks a lot for your help!
I bought a Miyata Path Runner new when I was a kid that I used (alot!) everyday until this year. It started to fell apart too badly (eg. the seatpost and crank arm broke in half). I got a gut feeling that the next thing breaking would be the frame / fork. Not fun with a child seat mounted back.

The new one I got here is in much better condition and seems to be not used much.

It got 3 bottle cage mounts. One on the underside and two inside the main triangle.

There is one sticker left on the fork for cromo but all I see on the frame itself is the made in japan sticker.

Chr0m0ly 

Limper

Thank you, John Nolan. I'm downloading the Omnibus now.

ola

I've just gotten some new info from someone that says he knows that it's a SportRunner. I'll ask him for the catalogues. Maybe they differed in different countries (Sweden)?

Elev12k

Thx!