Bridgestone Kabuki

[ghammer]

Hello There,

seems i might be headed towards a Bridgestone Kabuki, my size. My wife's boss "found" this bike in his mom's basement. the frame is old, i saw iphone pics and it looks like it's from the 70s/early 80s. The lugs are square-looking, not the scooped and detailed lugs of later Bridgestones.

For the record, I've owned a RB-1 for 10 years.

Am not sure of tubing and general quality; it has eyelets for fenders, and the rear drop outs have none of those little screws to adjust the rear wheel.

In any case, this would be a fixie, i've been meaning to build me a fixed-gear for the longest time and this seems like a good opportunity.

If anyone out there could provide some more info, it'd be great. Specifically, bb size, and seatpost width, as well as tubing and general quality.

Thanks so much. When/if I get it and assemble it, i'll post a pic here.

Gus

[weisan]

This reminded me of a kabuki I found in a dumpster long time ago...no longer in my possession, I don't even remember what I did with it.

http://alicehui.com/serotta/kabuki/kabuki.jpg

[veloduffer]

I had one as a teenager in the 80s. The tubing was stainless steel bonded to aluminum lugs, IIRC. Mine had orange lugs and unpainted tubes. The head badge was the coolest part.

These were made well before Grant Petersen was at BStone.- about 43 years ago. They were not racing bikes but 10-speed bikes - Nothing special except the tubing and unlike the “classic” BStone bikes of the early 90s. I remember it being heavy and think the drivetrain was Suntour.

I had a 1991 CB-0, 1992 RB-2, 1993 RB-1 and XO-1, and a 1993 MB-3.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[fiamme red]

This reminded me of a kabuki I found in a dumpster long time ago...no longer in my possession, I don't even remember what I did with it.

http://alicehui.com/serotta/kabuki/kabuki.jpgDéjà vu: https://forums.thepaceline.net/showthread.php?p=339429#post339429. :)

The Kabuki was from before Grant Petersen's tenure at Bridgestone. Some information here: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/japan.html#kabuki.

When Japanese bikes were in high fashion, many companies went out of their way to market bikes under Japanese-associated names, including Lotus, Mikado, Shogun, and probably others. Kabuki was a trade name of Bridgestone (a Japanese company with a non-Japanese name!)

The Kabuki line used some unusual construction techniques, specifically, a system of sticking the frame tubes into a special mold and forming cast aluminum "lugs" in place around the ends of the tubes. The most notable of this line was the "Submariner" which used un-painted stainless steel tubing, and was marketed in seacoast areas for its rust-resistance. Because the cast aluminum lugs were not flexible like steel lugs, these bikes didn't use a conventional seat-post binder. Instead, they used a seat post with an expander wedge like that of a handlebar stem...you had to remove the saddle from the seatpost to adjust the height, then re-install the saddle! Even sillier, many of these frames had what looked like a conventional seatpost bolt mounted in a projection of the rigid lug, simply to provide a place to mount a cable stop for the center-pull caliper brake!

[kiwisimon]

some specs here
http://www.velo-pages.com/main.php?g2_itemId=14368&g2_imageViewsIndex=1

[thunderworks]

I was in the bike business from 1974 until 1994. I sold Kabuki bikes until 1977 or so - can't remember the exact year.

Most of the Kabuki bikes had what we called a "die cast" frame. They were very strong, but also very heavy bikes. The Bridgestone Kabuki bikes did include a few models that had traditional lugged frames and nice cro-moly tubing, but the bulk of what was imported to the US had the die cast frames. They were hi tensile steel tubing, cast lugging, and . . . did I say heavy? There were a few stainless steel tubing bikes, and probably even some alloy tube bikes, but the vast bulk of the Kabuki bikes were low tech, bikes - nicely made but marketed towards an entry level buyer. Many of the same bikes were available under another marketing label - "C.Itoh" - who I think was the original importer of the Bridgestone built bikes brought into the US.

The seat lug was not split with a traditional binder bolt. The seat post had a wedge similar to stems of the era. A threaded bolt pulled the wedge tight to seize the seat post in the seat tube. The system worked fine.

At that time, Sun Tour was the predominant component supplier for Japanese bikes imported to the US. Suntour in the mid-1970's was vastly superior to Shimano whose entry level components were not nearly as nuanced as Sun Tour.

Bottom line . . . Kabuki bikes were good bikes, mostly marketed toward entry level buyers, heavy, reliable, etc.

[pinkshogun]

i have a quill seat post if you need one