Talk:Keith Bontrager
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The closing statement in this article seems rather biased for being "neutral", and the article in general is sloppy.
I've restructured and rewritten the article. I'd like to have more history on Keith's motorcycle racing background - it's about the time of 'On Any Sunday' so there might be some interesting interaction with the likes of Mert Lawill.
Apologies if it's not so neutral (not happy with the wording explaining why steel went out of fashion).
-- Nick Wallis 12:00, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
There's some confusion over the size of the Mavic rims used by Keith to develop the first mountain bike rims.
For clarity I'm modifying it to 700c. This is the actual size marked on MA40 rims and avoids the sort of 27"/28"/29" confusion that has arisen.
-- Nick Wallis 15:30, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
"of course if he'd have left the MA40's as they were and stuck them in a mountain bike he'd have invented the 29er years before anyone else."
-- Nick Wallis 13:40, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
The discussion of the two-piece seatstays used in MTB frames is somewhat incorrect. I interviewed with Bontrager in 1994 and KB told me personally that the two-piece construction was used to allow for alignment discrepancies during frame manufacture. He added that they'd improved their production process to the point that the stay alignment was no longer an issue, so they were changing the design to use the one-piece seatstays, which also weighed less. I don't think this changeover had anything to do with the Trek buyout, but the later Trek-built Privateer frames naturally adopted the one-piece frame design. The differences that I've noticed on Privateer frames include a) no reinforcing gussets at the bottom sides of the seat tube at the bottom-bracket shell and b) no reinforcing gussets on the outer sides of the chainstays at the bottom-bracket shell. Privateer frames also use 27.0mm seatposts, while Race and Race Lite frames use 26.8mm posts.
-- Jim Gourgoutis [jimg@yojimg.net]
