You are looking at a 1993 Nishiki Evolution, and it's a vintage steel mountain bike nerd's wet dream...
I spent a lot of time pondering this bike before finally pulling the trigger at $100 - which was over paying. I've sold bikes a lot less ugly than this for $50, and I was happy to get that. This is just a basket case that's been put together. However. There were some parts I wanted, and while this looks like just another steel hardtail, this is not just another steel hardtail.
I have the Nishiki catalog from 1993, and I think this might be the wildest production steel bike ever made. Here's the details;
- Tange Prestige top tube
- Tange Concept outer butted seat tube
- Tange Ultimate 'ditch' down tube
- True Temper triple butted stays
You can see that we have the Ultimate Ultrastrong sticker there, and that's the tube set where the ribbed downtube comes from. The seat tube is flared at the BB like you see on high-end Tange tubes, and it's very hard to photograph, but you can certainly feel the butting at the top of the seat tube. I don't really know if 'Prestige top tube' is really anything special, but, that's what it's got.
If you're unfamiliar with the term, 'butting' in this context means a change in the thickness of the tube. A 'double-butted' tube is pretty common, and it usually the end of the tube was thicker - because that's where you welded it - and the middle of the tube was thinner, because it wasn't as stressed as much. If you've ever heard of the Parkpre 925, that's what the name refers to; 9 to 5, or 0.9mm at the ends, to 0.5mm in the middle.
This means that in the case of the True Temper stays, there will be three different thicknesses of steel in the length of the tube. This is some serious attention to detail that's maybe saving tens of grams of weight.
I have the Nishiki catalog from 1993, and I think this might be the wildest production steel bike ever made. Here's the details;
- Tange Prestige top tube
- Tange Concept outer butted seat tube
- Tange Ultimate 'ditch' down tube
- True Temper triple butted stays
You can see that we have the Ultimate Ultrastrong sticker there, and that's the tube set where the ribbed downtube comes from. The seat tube is flared at the BB like you see on high-end Tange tubes, and it's very hard to photograph, but you can certainly feel the butting at the top of the seat tube. I don't really know if 'Prestige top tube' is really anything special, but, that's what it's got.
If you're unfamiliar with the term, 'butting' in this context means a change in the thickness of the tube. A 'double-butted' tube is pretty common, and it usually the end of the tube was thicker - because that's where you welded it - and the middle of the tube was thinner, because it wasn't as stressed as much. If you've ever heard of the Parkpre 925, that's what the name refers to; 9 to 5, or 0.9mm at the ends, to 0.5mm in the middle.
This means that in the case of the True Temper stays, there will be three different thicknesses of steel in the length of the tube. This is some serious attention to detail that's maybe saving tens of grams of weight.
So yeah, another steel hardtail, something I really didn't need. But there were some parts on here that made it worthwhile. Firstly the Manitou 2 fork, which is clearly toast, but why not take this opportunity to learn how to tear them down?
The rest of the parts were all over the place. LX brakes with XTR levers - shifter pods shaved off - XT cranks and rear derailleur, front wheel is a super cool and rare Araya RM-395 Team rim on a Shimano XT hub, rear wheel is an anodized Ritchey Vantage on a Shimano DX with an 8 speed XTR cassette. And this is very interesting because someone had to swap out the freehub body and axle on the DX 7 speed hub in order for this to work.
The rest of the parts were all over the place. LX brakes with XTR levers - shifter pods shaved off - XT cranks and rear derailleur, front wheel is a super cool and rare Araya RM-395 Team rim on a Shimano XT hub, rear wheel is an anodized Ritchey Vantage on a Shimano DX with an 8 speed XTR cassette. And this is very interesting because someone had to swap out the freehub body and axle on the DX 7 speed hub in order for this to work.
I thought I might keep this for a bit, ride it around a bit, see if all the effort put into curating the tube set really mattered - but that huge dent in the top tube really turned me off. And, I've recently decided to start on paring down my collection, so given the choice between nearly any Rocky Mountain, and this, I'm taking the Rocky. So, I built it to flip as seen here.
We've got a mostly Shimano DX group, with XT shifters, Ritchey logic cranks, and the weird trails/dirt jumper fork that came on my Spot. It's certainly too long for this frame, but I really built it with cruising in mind, as the bars should pretty clearly convey.
It's very nice to ride; smooth and relaxed. It shouldn't be a problem to get my money back on it, even though as I've said many times, a bike like this should never be worth less than $200. The Market does not seem to agree with me on this though.
We've got a mostly Shimano DX group, with XT shifters, Ritchey logic cranks, and the weird trails/dirt jumper fork that came on my Spot. It's certainly too long for this frame, but I really built it with cruising in mind, as the bars should pretty clearly convey.
It's very nice to ride; smooth and relaxed. It shouldn't be a problem to get my money back on it, even though as I've said many times, a bike like this should never be worth less than $200. The Market does not seem to agree with me on this though.
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