Help me understand Bridgestone RB-1

[Ray]

Originally Posted by Serpico

.

I have that fork on a bike that I should get rid of for about 150 different reasons. But I won't because it has that fork on it. Gorgeous stuff - amazing it came on a relatively chea production mountain bike.

-Ray

it was a well made bike with no bad characteristics (as obtuse would say), with a great price tag. what a gunnar should be, if it wasn't so flexy in the front end.

[Serotta PETE]

Originally Posted by Fat Robert

it was a well made bike with no bad characteristics (as obtuse would say), with a great price tag. what a gunnar should be, if it wasn't so flexy in the front end.

Sounds like a SEROTTA CDA today without the flexy front end

Originally Posted by Pete Mckeon

Sounds like a SEROTTA CDA today

not even close. if serotta subcontracted to have a quiality steel frame with no frills paint made, and then sell for 750 bucks, it would be a modern RB1.

a cda is a high end steel frame. just because it doesn't cost six grand doesn't mean its a "value" that way a RB1 was. there are no RB 1 values these days...hence the fetish.

[Grant McLean]

Originally Posted by michael white

...
Much of the appeal had to do with the context of the time: if you were used to riding a rigid aluminum bike and then hopped on a higher end Bridgestone for the same price, you (or I, anyway) realized how great lugged steel really is. Functionally, it was unbeatable for the buck. And by the early 90's, most of the other Japanese lugged bicycles, developed in the 70's boom, were gone--the companies either folded or moved on to other materials. .

I've always held a similar view. Just before the first RockShox started to
appear in shops, ('94ish?) most value priced hardtails had terrible cheap steel forks.
Bridgestone, Specialized, Ritchey all sold steel mtb's that rode well, but lots
of Treks, Jamis, Yokota, and most of the other bikes reviewed in Bicycle Guide
shootouts had brutally stiff forks. Is it a coincidence that suspension forks
"solved" the problem of bad ride quality mtb fork? A couple of years later,
the same thing happened in road. Harsh oversize alu frames with bad geometry
and stiff & heavy wheels were being sold as the 'new' and greatest thing ever.
Now carbon bikes are sold as the solution to the ride quality 'issue' of
the badly designed alu bikes.

If you rode a bridgestone RB-1 with it's contemporaries, you might really prefer
it to the other choices of the day.


g

in 1992-93, i had a trek 660 to race on. i had begged for RB1s, but that's not what the shop carried.


if I had one now, i'd probably like it a lot. there's a lot to be said for a well-made lugged steel bike.

[fiamme red]

Originally Posted by Marcusaurelius

I rode an 1993 Bridgestone RB 1 and it was a great looking bike and it rode quite well. Grant peterson was all about keeping things simple and has never had many kind words for shimano's sti shifters. Bridgestone only put sti shifters on their bikes at the very end. I recall they put an unflattering picture of sti shifters in a bridgestone catalog. Even to this day Grant Peterson will only sell down tube or bar-end shifters on his website.

In 1993, STI was offered as an option in the catalogue: http://www.sheldonbrown.com/bridgest...3/pages/26.htm.

By 1994, STI was standard:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/bridgest...4/pages/45.htm

[shinomaster]

I almost bought a red Rb1 back in 93 as my first road bike....I would up with a pretty, purple Japanese made paramount series 7. I wanted sti and the rb1 had bar end shifters and was more expensive.

[Climb01742]

Originally Posted by Grant McLean

Harsh oversize alu frames with bad geometry
and stiff & heavy wheels were being sold as the 'new' and greatest thing ever.
Now carbon bikes are sold as the solution to the ride quality 'issue' of
the badly designed alu bikes.

i've never looked at it that way (probably 'cause i'm dim-witted) but there's a lot o' truth in it. now there are lots of badly-designed, bad-ridin' carbon frames. i've been spending a lot of time lately ridin' a well-designed tin can. it rides sweetly. better than a couple o' my carbon rigs. go figure. wise words, g-man.

[Grant McLean]

Originally Posted by Climb01742

i've never looked at it that way (probably 'cause i'm dim-witted) but there's a lot o' truth in it. now there are lots of badly-designed, bad-ridin' carbon frames. i've been spending a lot of time lately ridin' a well-designed tin can. it rides sweetly. better than a couple o' my carbon rigs. go figure. wise words, g-man.

thanks climb.

The next thing they'll sell you is a nice steel Pegoretti as the antidote to the
bad carbon bike!

I just bought one of my favorite albums on vinyl last weekend.
So far i've had the LP, cassette, cd, and now LP again, and it's in my iPod too.
Same as it ever was...

g

[dbrk]

Just to be clear(er) about the demise of Bridgestone USA. Bstone wanted to be huge and profitable. It was truly profitable even when it decided to leave. So why leave? MOST importantly: The yen/dollar fell apart. Companies like Bstone had not shifted production to Taiwan (or yet to China) and they couldn't compete for profit or market share. Before Grant became product manager they sold far, far fewer bikes than during his tenure. (Just fyi, I know these things 'cause I have access to the story.) Some Bstone dealers didn't like that Bstones were quirky and not following the trends towards STI (fully) or this or that latestgreatest. But the bikes were selling and aplenty. Specialized/Trek/Cdale were the market Bstone wanted and never got. Bstone bicycles was always an obscure plum of The Big Company.

As for costs...well, you should know what an RB-1 cost to make (I'm not telling)...which partly explains why they had such superb warranties. Bstone was making plenty on each bike. They just weren't selling HUGE numbers.

The RBs were fantastic bikes, not just for the price but considering price into a larger equation of value/performance, few others have ever been "better", imho.

dbrk

[Serotta PETE]

We can agree to disagree and then have a glass or two or three of red,,,,

I was talking of the quality and the ride. I do not know of a company today that does sell a quality frame for 750 or even a 1000. In my opinion the CDA is a quality/custom steel frame for a fair price in today's $$s..

By the way I have a CR SEROTTA excellent shape 57cm that I will sell for $750. (really). Or a 57cm Lengend Ti for 1200....

lets go have that glass of red......PETE

Originally Posted by Fat Robert

not even close. if serotta subcontracted to have a quiality steel frame with no frills paint made, and then sell for 750 bucks, it would be a modern RB1.

a cda is a high end steel frame. just because it doesn't cost six grand doesn't mean its a "value" that way a RB1 was. there are no RB 1 values these days...hence the fetish.

[michael white]

Hmm I think Bridgestone's reknown for some of us isn't as simple as that--it wasn't just a matter of a "good value" frame. What happened there, it seems to me, is that fate brought a well-established Japanese bike manufacturer into conjunction with a savvy American designer, and for a time there was a very fruitful correspondence. Yes, I know about the exchange rate problems and the supposed friction with the vision of the parent company, etc. But what Bridgestone brought was a solid blue-collar product, representative of much more than itself, which Grant was clever enough to tweak--and he not only knew what it was, but how to highlight what was good about it. Riders, some of us, recognized that the bikes were about the ride, that they were smart, bombproof and tuned, and that it didn't really matter if the dropouts weren't filed and the lugs were plain. In fact there was a certain blue-collar charm to the finish, and the paint was a heck of a lot better than the competition. If the Japanese corporate culture doomed Bridgestone USA, it also made it work, as long as it did work, I feel. That's just my instinct. It was both of them, the Japanese culture working both with and against Peterson's "vision," that made the bikes interesting and subtle.

You can get a good handful of steel frames for under a grand, if you know where to look. Some lugged, some welded or fillet-brazed. USA made, as well as others. Do they spark your interest? Why or why not? (Rhetorical question.)

best,

mw

[michael white]

Gunnar, Curtlo, Heron, TET, to name but four.

[Serotta PETE]

Thanks, one of the things I love about the forum is the ability to always learn something new/ PETE

Originally Posted by michael white

Hmm I think Bridgestone's reknown for some of us isn't as simple as that--it wasn't just a matter of a "good value" frame. What happened there, it seems to me, is that fate brought a well-established Japanese bike manufacturer into conjunction with a savvy American designer, and for a time there was a very fruitful correspondence. Yes, I know about the exchange rate problems and the supposed friction with the vision of the parent company, etc. But what Bridgestone brought was a solid blue-collar product, representative of much more than itself, which Grant was clever enough to tweak--and he not only knew what it was, but how to highlight what was good about it. Riders, some of us, recognized that the bikes were about the ride, that they were smart, bombproof and tuned, and that it didn't really matter if the dropouts weren't filed and the lugs were plain. In fact there was a certain blue-collar charm to the finish, and the paint was a heck of a lot better than the competition. If the Japanese corporate culture doomed Bridgestone USA, it also made it work, as long as it did work, I feel. That's just my instinct. It was both of them, the Japanese culture working both with and against Peterson's "vision," that made the bikes interesting and subtle.

You can get a good handful of steel frames for under a grand, if you know where to look. Some lugged, some welded or fillet-brazed. USA made, as well as others. Do they spark your interest? Why or why not? (Rhetorical question.)

best,

mw