Ironfish653

You're pretty close, here. Once the "Repack" crew tried riding their bikes anywhere but down the hill , you need a different tool for the job (Klunkers were the originals DH bikes)
Something lightweight -ish but still sturdy, with a wide range of gears for various terrain? A little more upright, with clearance for wider tires for comfort on bad roads? Sounds like a Touring Bike to me.
Move the brake bosses and lace some 559 rims to that "Alpine" hub, and you're a handlebar swap away from the simple early MTBs

OF course, once you've got more than one, you're going to start racing them; and it just goes from there

LesterOfPuppets

Gary Fisher was going with tight rear triangles by 92. I remember an interview back then where he spoke of his love of riding road bikes on trails and wanted a MTB that was more road biker...

Repack Rider

Joe Breeze built the first purpose built balloon tire off road bicycle. If you build a road bike, you take advantage of the lore accumulated by millions of previous efforts. Joe didn't have that. You have to start somewhere, so he started off by copying the geometry of his nearly 50 year old Schwinn. When Tom Ritchey picked up the torch (literally), Gary Fisher and Joe offered their ideas, but he also came very close to Schwinn geometry. Between 1982 and 1984 every major manufacturer cloned the Ritchey bicycle in order to save years of R&D.

Finally when people with different riding conditions, different uses for the bicycle, and different terrain started building mountain bikes, local variants appeared.

Worst geometry (IMO) was the ProCruiser built by a guy who raced motorcycles (Mert Lawwill), but not bicycles. Very long, very slack, and a terrible climbing bike.

My 1983 Ritchey Annapurna is now my town bike, pretty close to original Ritchey geometry, and I have to say if is an incredible handling bike.

As an experiment, Joe Breeze built a bike with an 80-degree head angle. He says it took him a little practice to ride it effectively, but after he got used to it, he had no problems. Later, when he went back to his regular bike, he says it felt like steering through mud.

Since VeloPress took my book out of print, the price has gone up.

merziac

We are all always very interested in anything you want to add to any discussion.

abdon 

As you guys can probably tell by now I just love understanding the evolution of things. It is almost like a biological system with even branches that ended up in an evolutionary dead end.

Look at this beauty from 1980 by the Cook Brothers, Three Bar BMX Cruiser:


Brooks saddle, TA crank, caliper brake on front and coaster brake on the back, a totally modern (for it's time) unicrown fork, rear facing horizontal drops (in case you ever wanted to turn it into a track bike) and of course a road bike quill because it was just begging for it to complete the package.

I'm not gonna lie I would ride it.

SkinGriz

You’d need to backpedal for a long, long, long time to get the back brakes to work.

Really cool looking bike other than that.

abdon 

Good catch, I meant to say drum brakes.

SkinGriz

I googled pics of your bike.

To be honest I don’t understand how the headset works.

It has pinch bolts. But it looks like normal threading for the bearing cup and lock ring?

Thank you.

Repack Rider

Sleeve silver soldered into the steerer. Hbar clamps on that. There is a wooden plug that caps the steerer.

SkinGriz

So no quill stem?

Silver solder kept temps low enough to not ruin the threads for the races?

I’ve heard of 1” threadless and have pondered how to do it on a threaded fork.

SkinGriz

I just realized it 5 minutes ago. Looking at pics of other pioneering mountain bikes. Drum brakes also need the reaction arm.

A coaster is technically a type of drum brake. But I am not going to be that guy going on about how the disc rotors on my bike are 26”…

Repack Rider

I was Gary Fisher's housemate when he put the derailleur gears onto a late '30s Schwinn in early 1975. It worked well enough that I converted my own klunker as soon as I found a drum rear brake. Over the next three years a couple of dozen more of these bikes joined ours. The "movement," if it can be called that, was not huge. There are now dozens of "tribute" klunkers for each real one that existed in the '70s.

As we all know, Joe Breeze built ten revolutionary bikes in 1977-1978 that replaced the "klunkers."

In 1978 Gary and I and Joe Breeze (and others) went to Crested Butte for the first time. Gary was on his klunker, but Joe and I were on our Breezers (#1 and #2 respectively)

When Gary finished off his first klunker at the end of that ride, he had to catch up with Joe and me. Joe had built a handful of road bikes before attempting the Breezer bikes, but he was not really a frame builder. Yet. Because of that and the fact that he had to design the bike from scratch, it took him 8 months to deliver my bike.

Gary didn't want to wait. He went to two different frame builders, Tom Ritchey and Jeff Richman, and ordered two bikes from each one. He figured he would get the first one that was completed, and he had a few friends who would take the other three. Tom had raced the Repack downhill on January 20, 1979, on a Schwinn "Excelsior," so he knew what we were up to.

Tom Ritchey was a great choice, because he built lugless frames, which meant he was not restricted to the tubing sizes and angles of a lugged frame. With input from Joe and Gary, it took Tom a week to pop out three frames, one for himself and two for Gary. A frame is not a bike, so Gary finished the two bikes by buying the parts over the counter at the bike shop.

Using straight-gauge tubing and a standardized design, Tom found the new style so much cheaper and easier to build than custom "one-off" road bikes, that he built a few more on "spec." When he couldn't sell them in Palo Alto, he asked Gary to get rid of them. Gary enlisted my aid, and we rented a garage for our "business," which we called "MountainBikes." For the next 3+ years, Tom Ritchey built all our frames.

So if you built Gary's "first frame," it would be after he bought my interest in the company in 1983.

Repack Rider

Not a "Unicrown." That was a standard BMX fork like the Redline fork on my Breezer #2. Cook Brothers made one very similar, which is on that bike. The "Unicrown" (BTW, I came up with that name) used standard tapered and curved fork blades.

chain_whipped

Pssss.... I think he was referring to the other Gary.
Peace and ride on!

Portlandjim

Commenting on the so-called history of mountain bikes is something I try to avoid. I have not read Charlie's book, but I assume it deals with the MTB scene centered on Marin County California. ​There were other regions of the country doing work on off road bikes during the same period. I built frames in Portland Oregon, but had friends and customers in the Bay area during the 1970's. Before WWW, Stewart Brand created a print version of the internet called The Whole Earth Catalog. I always read them from cover to cover. One issue, around 1978, had a story about Joe Breeze's off road bike. He had made ten bikes that were for sale, and the story had his contact info. One of my customers, who was let's call it "growing herbs in the woods' ', wanted to get around on dirt roads and trails on a bike. He had sufficient funds to have a custom bike made, and asked me if I could make something like the Breeze bike. I was aware of this development going on in Marin Co., and knew Gary Fisher was ​s​elling parts to use​ with this kind of bike. However, my customer's needs were not quite the same as bombing down a mountain at full speed. ​2​6" wheels in particular were not evolved at that time, heavy steel rims and tires that weighed 5 pounds each. I talked him into building a bike using 650B size wheels. I figured out how to purchase some Hakkapeliitta knobby tires, they sold a 650C version that was perfect for this task. My customer was pleased. This build sheet shows the bike, dated Aug. 1979. During my frame building days in Portland, I met Mike Sinyard when he first started selling bike parts in 1974. We became good friends. Sometime shortly after I made this 650B off road bike, Mike mentioned that I should come down to San Jose and visit him. I did, and he had one ​f​rom the first bikes that Tom Ritchey built for Gary Fisher's and Charlie Kelly's ​​small bike company. I rode this Ritchey built bike around ​a​nd had a blast. It had a frame based on the Schwinn as Charly mention's, and 26" wheels with the steel rims and super heavy tires. But the concept was appealing. I went back to Portland and built a bike for myself right after this​, and the BMX world had just come out with aluminum 26" rims so I used them. ​This frame used normal bicycle tubing, Reynolds 531 and Columbus, along with lugs and classic fork crown design​ (which I made by hand from solid). Photo of the partial red Merz is this bike, and the build sheet with Jim Merz. Unfortunately there is no build date on the sheet. Around this time, I was negotiating a job at Mike Sinyard's then small company Specialized Bicycle Components in San Jose. Mike had another frame builder friend, Tim Neenan closer at hand, so choose him instead of me. I was disappointed, and just kept working in my shop in Portland. I had nothing to do with Tim's design for the first TIG welded Stumpjumper, which was closely based on the Ritchey built MTB. But, shortly after the Stumpjumper bikes hit the market, Tim decided he wanted to move to SLO. Mike didn't want to have him work remotely, so called me to take over the technical side of Specialized. My first day was to get on a plane, from Portland, and meet Mike in Japan. I had already made 3 prototype frames for Specialized, based on my lugged Merz MTB. This became the 2nd version of Stumpjumper. All this "who did what when" led the Marin County crowd to revile Mike Sinyard. Because I was working with him (and was based in Portland Oregon not Marin County), I got totally neglected from any "official" MTB history. Not that it matters, I think I made some impact in the development of MTB bikes. Back to frame geometry during the early days of MTB. This was not based on touring bikes at all. The first Marin MTB frame designs were from the old Schwinn frames. No great innovations in geometry happened because the customers were clamoring for bikes, the small builders weren't even close to keeping up with demand. The first Stumpjumpers went out the door like crazy. When I got to work at Specialized, I started making some prototype geometry frames, steeper angles and shorter wheelbase. This led to the Pink Team Stumpjumpers, at first just for the team. Someone commented that the BB height was lower on these early MTB bikes, 12" is not low. Anyway, I hope I don't start a controversy with my thoughts.

This link shows my early MTB frame details. Note fork crown:

https://goo.gl/photos/gDU1y2W44oyTkDhR6

Jim Merz

chain_whipped

John Finley-Scott was onto something back in 1953, though doubt he was thinking geometry. But decades later Tom Ritchy was making frames ironically with numbers very close to the old Schwnn World. 70 years later, still makes for a nice all arounder.

Fahrenheit531 

I'm actually just about to post this documentary in its own thread after I finish rewatching, don't know how many have seen it.
Gary Fisher, klunkers, etc., are in the Wheels of Change chapter, starting at 19:00, straight from the source and with video.

...the rationale behind the term "Repack" is hilarious.

abdon 

Jim, thanks a lot for sharing, it is most appreciated.

I didn't mean to imply that they were. The funny thing is that just like the old clunkers had features that made them ideal for conversion into Hill boombers, these early straight tubed long wheelbase mountain bikes are ideal for conversion into tourers. My all-time favorite touring bike is my early d trek 720 but since moving to Alaska I need a gravel tourer so I'll be putting together a 650b bike on one of these frames.

SkinGriz

That is a beautiful bike.

Do you have any pics or details of the chain tensioner?

Thanks.

chain_whipped

Very early Le Simplex. Thank you



coaster brake / 3 spd IGH / Cyclo 3 spd cog

Macguyver909

How did you shift the cogs? Stop, and then by hand? Also how far do you have to backpedal to get the coaster brake to work?

Schweinhund

Throw a pair of 650b's on an old schwinn cruiser and it's a pretty decent ride. makes a big difference.

Schweinhund

Well I guess that explains why the old 80's Spalding ATB's rode so good.
They're a dead on knock off of a Jim Mertz design.

Portlandjim

Please note that my last name is spelled Merz.

Schweinhund

I have called you Jim Mertz for 20+ years and now you tell me?
BTW, since you're on the line, my Rockhopper with a ubrake is the best riding bike I think I've ever had, Thank you!