Restoring Tinker's 1993 Storm Adroit - Part 1

Without a doubt this at the same time one of the more exciting restorations I've done and one of the more sad ones. Exciting because this is a bike I've been searching for well over a decade and sad because had it turned up when I started looking for it we'd be admiring a different bike. In the interest of brevity the bike turned up earlier this year when Tinker finally (after several attempts to locate the bike) decided to dig it out of his brother in law's house, where it apparently had been sitting (outside!) for quite some time. I had originally approached Tinker about this bike back in 2002/2003 and several times over the years, and for whatever reason he didn't want to or couldn't get a hold of it. Instead the bike languished and deteriorated in neglect. This happens more often than not and is really a testament to what many of the people who owned, raced on or otherwise possessed these bikes back in the day though of them. To me and many of my friends they are things to be cherished and appreciated, while to them they were just a race bike, or I guess just a bike. Consequently it's rare to find a bike with any race pedigree that has survived the test of time after it was retired. Anyways, the bike has been found, it's been put back together and that chapter can now be closed.

Here is how the bike was found earlier this year.

Just makes you go, WTF??? When I was looking for this bike, I definitely imagined it looking very differently. In reality, frame and any anodized parts faded to hell, wheels exploded (OK - not surprising given they were Ringle), parts missing/rusted, etc... I mean sure a race bike takes hits, parts get swapped, etc etc... but we know how the bike looked in the last race of the season and I'd wager a pretty penny that the vast majority of the 'patina' was acquired later and not on the trail.

The guys at The Pros Closet picked up the bike at Keysville and dropped it off at my shop. We started looking for parts and after a couple months had everything needed to get the bike rebuild. Here are some in progress pics during the cleanup and restoration

Looks like the Rock Shox went back on after the world in France.

As a Klein fan and especially a fan of the history of the Storm paintjob it's neat to see the progression in the development of the paintjob. Tinker and Sara's bikes were actually the second two painted after my and Kai's Storm (based off of the serial numbers 72 for mine, 206 for Kai and 238 for Tinker). The clouds on my bike are clearly done by hand whereas the ones here (at least on the downtube) are done with a stencil of some sort. The head tube is still a bit free form unlike the later production bikes.

You can still see glimmers of the orange in the dropouts. This was one of the bigger differences between my/Kai's Storms and Tinker/Sara's Storms. The additional color was not retained for the production bikes.

Paint fades in different ways across the color bands,

Yeah, that's never been serviced since 1993. Interestingly the spindle is steel and Ti as previously thought, same goes for the brake bosses. Again a subtle and inconsequential difference between my bike which came with Ti bosses and spindle.

I always found it odd that the painter put the KLEIN logo so low on this and Sara's bike. On my and Kai's Storms it was well above the front derailleur. Hard to see, but there is a ping pong ball sized dent just at the elbow of the L in KLEIN, ouchie...

Here it is after some thorough cleaning.

Although the frame was a 93 it was one of the later ones (total of at least 418 made in 93) as evidenced by the 2 bolt CCD (rather than the 3 bolt used on earlier frames)

I do like the look of black right after the clouds, the earlier bikes had maroon and no black at all on the frame. The whole paintjob has a pearlescent clear which gives the colors a very rich depth.

Up until Sara's bike was uncovered a couple years ago we never knew if the EX designator was just a visual effect or real. While it doesn't really mean anything it's still kind of cool.

You can clearly see the 332 stamped on the frame (also on the rims) which was Tinker's number at the 1993 Worlds.

This is the only decal I've never been able to find for my Storm, nice to see what it actually looks like in case I ever wanted to recreate it.

Here you can clearly see the layer of boron/carbon fibers bonded to the frame. Looks like the chain control device hadn't done a great job of preventing chainsuck.

One of the other differences between my bike and the eventual race bikes is the lack of fender mounts on the down tube (pictured are seat tube bottle mounts). Another hint that my bike (which has the extra mounts) was originally designated to be Tinker's race bike, but the color scheme was updated and a new bike was painted.

The old worlds fork hadn't faired well after the race. Not only were the legs pretty bent but the bearing seats were damaged and needed some clean up before it go into the frame

A little detailed file work and all ready for installation...

Seems the fork has been in and out of this frame quite a few times as the bearings just slid in... There should be a pretty tight interference fit, so hopefully the loctite holds...

Frame cleanup complete and ready for assembly...

While the fork is a cool artifact of a specific race, I really would love to find the original painted to match Rock Shox lowers and Mission Control bar/stem combo...

Check back soon for the final write-up on the final assembly!

1985 Yeti #1

I've featured this bike in a couple previous blog posts but never took the time to photograph it well, so before I send it off for display I wanted to make sure I got some decent photos. I acquired this bike from John Parker a couple years ago after the original owner gave the bike back to him after a chance encounter at a motorcycle show John was promoting. According to John this was one of the first 3-5 bikes he ever built and the first bike he ever sold under the Yeti brand, following his acquisition of the Sweetheart Cycles brand and tooling. I've told the story to several old time Yeti guys (Russell, Frank and Chris H) and before I could get to the part where the bike was featured in the window at the Emily K bike shop in Santa Barbara they all beat me to the punch saying they remember seeing it there. I spoke with the original owner and she fondly remembered buying the bike and meeting John who told her she was buying the first one of his bikes. So, there you have it, that's as much as I know about it... Is it Yeti #1, hard to know for sure. But it is certainly a very special bike if you're a fan of the Yeti brand.

For all intents and purposes this bike is a late model Sweetheart Cycles Moto Cruiser. The only difference is the cable routing (some early MCs had euro BBs, plate style dropouts and other unique features). Russ Woorley raced on a nearly identical Yeti during the 1986 season.

The BMX style bars are probably the most striking feature of this bike. To think that this was considered acceptable Mountain Bike gear once upon a time is pretty amazing.

The famous loop stays that have gone on to characterize Yetis for decades to come. I'm not sure why John chose to run Campy derailleurs and Simplex shifters, perhaps it was just what he could get. But the choice didn't do the bike any favors on the trail. A Shimano XT Deerhead group would have been a much better choice, but perhaps the fact that the bike wasn't very rideable contributed to current condition of the bike - it never got much use :)

John said he powdercoated the cranks that Shimano loaned him for testing or evaluation so that they would not ask for them back.

While the bike handles really well and can be ridden rather aggressively when other bikes of the era give up the ghost, stopping and shifting are not the strong suits of the package. You really have to be on your game and have your head 50-60 feet ahead of you on the trail to give yourself ample time to shift or slow down or else you'll get tossed.

When the bike was first sold it didn't have any decals and John provided an Ice Axe decal to the original owner later on. There are photos of the bike that show this decal on the down tube. They were later removed in an attempt to deter theft by removing any identification.

IRC X-1 tires are some of the best mountain bike tires from the early days. They were some of the more aggressive tires available before companies like Specialized, Panaracer and Onza came on the scene.

Yetis are famous for their top tube cable routing and this bike's routing is the precursor of the better known 1-2-3 o'clock configuration used in the eventual FROs and subsequently the Ultimate and ARCs for decades to come.

This is literally the cockpit shown on the first generation Yetiman headtube badge.

Weinman brakes on Weinman rims (26mm rear and 23mm front) provide braking duties as best as they can, which is to say not very well at all.

I liked how the original bike used spoke nipples for brake cable ends, and so I decided to keep it that way.

Reaching the shifters and getting them to operate is not very easy. There isn't enough friction in the shifters and so it's somewhat difficult to keep the bike in a low gear, it tends to want to skip back down under load.

An innovative way of actuating a bottom pull front derailleur from the top. Top pull front derailleurs didn't come out for another 5-6 years and this type of routing (later with a pulley wheel) was used on Yetis, Treks, Fats and others who wanted to run the cables along the top tube.

I wish this bike was a bit bigger so I could ride it a bit more. As it is I can get around on it fine, but it's just not ideal. I do have another very early Yeti that I can ride and for the most part they are very similar. The later bike has much better components compared to this one, so it's all around a better bike.

I have to imagine that when this bike and the subsequent Yetis started hitting the trails it caused a decent sensation in the community. These bikes were very different than the models coming out of the Marin area and I think really contributed to the development of what eventually became known as NORBA geometry. The quick handling, steeper angles, beefy fork and shorter wheelbase made for a very agile bike which still climbed efficiently and was still pretty well suited for longer rides. At 29.7lbs this bike is no lightweight (a full 2lbs heavier than my larger 87 FRO), but somehow the weight isn't obvious when on the trail. I have to imagine that the bars and stem contribute to this heft and were some of the first parts removed from Russ' race bike and replaced with a Cook Bros bar/stem package.