In fact it was probably more comfortable to ride than any contemporary bike except maybe beach cruisers and dutch bikes designed for short trips with minimal efficiency. The dirt-drop handlebars and upright position made the RockCombo super comfortable to ride. It had design elements that made off-road trails something to entertain rather than avoid. The RockCombo was more fun to ride than a typical touring bike, the steering not as sleepy and the tires not as slick.
The Suntour and Specialized branded parts were robust and worked pretty well. 26″ wheels for quick acceleration and better lateral stiffness than 700c wheels along with more plentiful tire options. It’s too bad that this model didn’t have staying power, it seemed like a good idea. The RockCombo didn’t evolve into the 2020 Specialized Diverge simply because the RockCombo never had any kids it was an evolutionary dead end. The carbon molds squeezed the tubes extremely tight, reducing the size and number of “voids”, and leaving them with “optimum compaction” of the material.ĭespite certain design elements and an appearance that would suggest otherwise, this old Specialized RockCombo isn’t the grandfather of modern gravel bikes. This construction method, which took frame construction in small steps instead of trying to create an entire bike frame at once, reduced the amount of epoxy and fillers left over inside the completed frame. Trek used high grade carbon material and superbly engineered tooling to mold each lug and tube. OCLV stood for Optimum Compaction, Low Void. Trek’s OCLV carbon framesets were about 5 years old by the year 2000, yet they were still at the cutting edge of technology. No matter how the history books record the results, Trek was pretty proud that the Tour was won aboard their creation, a fairly stock model 5500 OCLV carbon road bike. That should read “L**** A********’s” 1999 Tour de France victory. The gaudy paint job and 1999 – bike limited run commemorates Lance Armstrong’s victory at the ’99 Tour de France. This is a Trek 5500 racing bike from the year 2000. The Attitude utilized proprietary headset bearings and integrated component elements like the Klein Mission Control bar while the flagship Adroit stood out with it’s massively oversized (but thin) aluminum tubing, brilliant paint schemes and integration from the handlebar to the fork tips.ġ999 Tour de France commemorative Trek 5500 road bike The Rascal eliminated those unsightly rack eyelets and shaved away a few grams of aluminum with rear-entry dropouts. The Pinnacle was considered the base model because you could bolt racks to it and it had traditional rear dropouts. The real hierarchy to Klein’s off-road offerings involved weight and component integration. Tinker probably hadn’t been “entry level” since racing BMX bikes as an eight year old kid. The ad copy suggested that the Rascal should be considered an “entry level” racing bike, but if you happened to watch or line up at an elite level NORBA race in 1992 you would have noticed Tinker Juarez had selected the Rascal as his racing bike. The Rascal was Klein’s 3rd tier mountain bike following the Adroit and the Attitude in the lineup. The top tube is drawn, squished or folded (we’re not really sure how it was made) into a diamond shape. The downtube starts out as a sheet of metal that gets folded into an oval shape and then welded at the seam.
It’s made of 6/4 alloyed titanium, which is really the best (lightest, stiffest) but most difficult blend of titanium to work. So paint job aside, the frame is awesome.
In case it isn’t obvious to you, the little blocks in the paint job represent bricks or floor tiles, and the fish-scale pattern is supposed to be tile adhesive as it would be spread on a floor.
The tiger hunter seattle professional#
The company has used professional cycling sponsorship for their advertising (sometimes joining with the Quickstep flooring company) for decades. Mapei is an Italian company that produces paint, adhesives, grout, and sealants for commercial and residential construction. This is a 1999 Colnago Oval Master titanium racing bike in the Mapei Team colors. Serious racing bikes don’t have to be painted black.
The tiger hunter seattle pro#
Despite the toy-store colors in the paint scheme this was once considered the most bad-ass racing bike in the pro peloton.