Originally Posted by sbarner

Here's one of the few mountain bikes I have that is NOT a Fat Chance. The backstory is that I bought a 1992 Schwinn 'Paramount' (those in the know will understand the single quotes) PDG90 in close to brand new condition for my wife several years ago. The PDG90 was a very high quality Japanese-made frameset, done in Tange tubing, and was certainly the equal in terms of workmanship and ride quality of most high-end, American-made bikes of its day. She already had a Fat Chance that I bought new for her in 1986 to match mine, but she wanted a bike specifically for our dirt road, and that was just before the gravel craze spawned a new generation of bikes. I really liked her bike with its Suntour XC Pro group, funky MicroDrive gearing, and GreaseGuard components. Imagine a mountain bike with a 24-tooth large cog! Yet, it worked, considering the gearing of the day. A couple years later, I spotted this well-worn twin of her bike and jumped on it. Its most notable features are the Amp Research fork, which works surprisingly well, and its retrofit rear disc brake, with a Brake Therapy torque arm braced to an unused cantilever stud. I believe these are the very first hydraulic brakes that Hayes made for mountain bikes and they still work quite well. This bike often comes up in my off-road rotation and I always enjoy banging around in the woods on it. The trails I ride most often are really hiking trails, steep, rooty, and rocky, and this bike handles them as well as anything else with its 9-speed SRAM mechs and twist-grip shifters. The paint was called Purple Freak, and it shifts from pinkish to purpleish depending on the light. The dropped right chainstay was a Schwinn feature to reduce chain slap.