You are looking at a Spot Brand mountain bike, made from steel; and those are the only two things that I can say about this bike with absolute certainty.
 You are looking at - again - a 2001 Brodie Rocket, and it is The War Wagon - my entry to the 2025 Cheap Bike Build Off.
 You are looking at a 1993 KHS Montana Comp, and it's an entirely adequate mountain bike, not necessarily worthy of a lot of words. However, let's talk about it in the context of a current Instagram contest and how it fits in with what I do with old bikes....Just so many bikes... 1. Kona Explosif. Super cool Columbus tubed frame that I would have kept if it was larger. Built it up as in the picture, couldn't sell it, took it apart and sold the frame. 2. Rocky Mountain Vertex 70. This was a damn hot rod; super light, full XTR, Rock Shox SID, and I got it for a song because the seller felt the fork was gone. It needed a good deal of work besides that, but the fork just needed air in both the positive and negative chambers. I'm going to guess the seller didn't know about the negative chamber. I maybe should have kept this as it was the best aluminium bike they made in '11, but I just wasn't feeling it. 3. Specialized Rockhopper. I bought this for an amount of money that I can't recall, tuned it up, and sold it for an amount that I can't remember. Here's another trio of bikes. 1. 1992 Rocky Mountain Hammer. I should have kept this one. Bought it for peanuts, took it apart and surgically cleaned every part. It was flawless. Sold it for slightly more peanuts. 2. I don't know what this was. Probably a Nishiki. I'm pretty sure it was $10, and not working. But I made it work with some parts that were just way too good for it. Probably sold it for $50 3. 1988 Norco Bigfoot. I'm guessing on the year based on the serial number, but it seems like it's older than '88. Anyway, grabbed this for a family member after they had asked me to fix up their bike, which was not worth the effort. This guy was entirely original and only needed a bit of work to make it perfect. Super cool old Canadian steel. Would you look at that; three genuine full suspension mountain bikes. It occurs to me, looking at these bikes, that I've never owned a full suspension bike for longer than a few months. Even when I rode trails where I might see some benefit from rear suspension, it just didn't seem to do anything for me. Anyway... 1. Rocky Mountain ETS X-70. I can't find a pic of this in the state that I got it; these pics are the 'after' with XTR wheels and Chromag bar and stem. Pretty sure it had XT wheels on it that were all black and just really looked good on my Blizzard. Tried to sell it as a bike, eventually broke it down and parted it out. 2. Rocky Mountain ETS X-50. I bought these two ETSs as a package for an amount that the X-70 was worth by itself. Again these are the 'after' pics, and I can't remember what I did to it - apart from putting a Chromag bar on it apparently - but I feel like it involves parts on the next bike. 3. Cannondale Jekyll 800 Sobe edition. Somehow, I traded a Santa Cruz Heckler frame that I repainted, for this frame. I recall building it, maybe riding it up and down the block, and that was good enough. These pics are what I used for the Marketplace listing.  2024 was a hekkin' good year as far as acquiring bikes goes - I got bikes from Canadian legends Paul Brodie, Chris Dekerf, and, Guiseppe Marinoni....
Who am I kidding anyway - these bikes are not recent. We're into summer '23 and older now. 1. Marin Eldridge Grade. Amazing paint on this. Low level bikes got paint like this in 1990. I don't know how companies made any money on them. Well, I suppose I do - they paid the Taiwanese labourers peanuts. 2. Kona Lava Dome. I bought this as a heavily used and scraped up bike, repainted and redecaled it, and it became a gorgeous vintage machine. Maybe the only thing I've done better lately is... 3. GT Zaskar. This was an awful thing when I got it - no paint, mismatched wheels, 130mm Marzocchi Dirt Jumper fork - it was just all kinds of wrong. So, it got fresh paint, new decals, Shimano XTR bits, and it became what it was; an incredible vintage bike that rode beautifully. I probably should have kept it.  Last weekend I was visiting a friend and as we toured his collection, a Rocky Mountain Vertex frame hanging on the wall caught my eye. The decals on that frame blew my mind, because I saw something I had never seen before... |
