Manitou have made the FS again. No really.

Looks like there has been a horrific telepod accident involving a 90s Manitou and Pace RC100

There aren't many bikes I don't want to ride.

But I'd be keen not to ride that bike.

Was it actually a competition where they get some primary school kids to draw mountain bikes, then the prize was manitou would build the favourite design?

I so wanted one of those 90's FS Manitou bikes. I think Mountain Goat licensed the design too, I remember reading a review / publicity piece on it in either MTB Pro or MBi.

/rose tinted specs

#ThoseWereTheDays

You'd have thought that if you were having a custom frame made (especially to commemorate a bit of an icon) you could spec' the headtube the length you wanted and not need to run 2" of spacers...

Rigger boots, flat cap, grease applied with an old copydex brush, I think we've hit peak hipster bike mechanic...

Not many bikes are genuinely eye wateringly ugly, but that is eye wateringly ugly. Disturbing

I had a Manitou HT back in 1994…….always wanted a FS though.

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Nope… I lied. I had a Marin Indian Fire Trail, but I pretended it was a Manitou

[img] [/img]

...Manitou lead the charge...

Even the spellchecker in MS Edge has picked that up [Facepalm emoji]

I actually quite like the looks. Better than that E-Cotic thing.

Direct to wallhanger. Could have spent that £20K building trails.

Marin licensed the original design, I know I had one, a Pine Mountain FRS. The concept was good, simple short travel, enough to provide some comfort but without the complication of (what were at the time) unreliable shocks.  The execution however… required constant fetteling and attention to access the meagre travel on offer

That's. Umm. Challenging in the looks department.

And as above, you're commissioning a custom frame, so why diddy headtube and all sorts of odd angles and spacings?

Look how they massacred my boy !

A friend had one of those when I was studying A Levels.  It was what got me interested in mtb beyond messing around in the local woods.

I remember it being eye wateringly expensive back then, and not significantly more capable than my Raleigh Moonrun!

The "by Ben Haworth" byline is a bit of a lie, isn't it?

It looks better than the new Cotic and I'd rather ride this than anything designed for tarmac.

Just give me a silver suit and RoboCop helmet.

I actually quite like the looks of that - probably just the purple and chrome more than anything else but I'd definitely have it in my garage.

I i wonder if it'll crack as effectively as the originals?

I don't have the energy to wade through that extraordinarily verbose press release you've lazily published in full. Could you not just have, you know, summarised it rather than inflicting a load of near-unreadable garbage on your readership?

If it's like the old ones the headtube will fall off anyway, then you can add a custom one.

So the only time he uses a torque wrench is to put the rotors on?

I don't mind the looks too much - but they should have just used higher rise bars.

No dropper?- I'm out.....

And what's with the odd dual seat post clamps?

Impressive word salad

 Could have spent that £20K building trails.

I don't think that's the idea of that Yootoob channel. I suspect they make a bit of cash from it and use it to do another grim bike build, purely for entertainment value. Fact that their bikes divide opinion shows it works. They did a completely gold bike build didn't they? That was the last time it came to my notice anyway.

You have to ask why they bothered and who wanted to spend the money to design and develop it.

I’d happily have the one from the nineties to go with my RTS, but that thing up there is awful.

That press release gave me a headache, do they ever read these things back to themselves?

"industry insiders"

what industry? cos its not bikes.

I don’t think that’s the idea of that Yootoob channel.

I vaguely remember reading a piece about the whole Dream Builds channel a while back. From - hazy - memory, Gee Milner, who makes the things, did the first one on a vague whim and was mildly astonished when it went viral and the rest - to paraphrase a lot of waffle - is history and also, I think, co-promoted with anyone who'll pay him to feature their bike/frame in one of his videos, though I'm just guessing at the last bit, but you know, capitalism, the internet etc.

I guess the appeal is that they combine a sort of zen-like calm to the watcher. In reality the endlessly smooth process is utterly at variants to most attempts at building up a modern frame, where you're endlessly trying to thread partly bled, poorly sealed hydraulic brake hose through a labyrinthine internal routing maze before haplessly connecting the wrong hose to the wrong lever then realising the whole thing routes through the headset anyway, or something like that.

If you were making a parody video - which it's absolutely ripe for - you'd 'wake up' at the end to find the reality of a load of expensive, semi-butchered components strewn across the workshop floor with the mechanic banging his head against the wall in frustration.

Also, the thing where he slathers most of the contents of a tube of grease onto the headset bearings. Do people really use that much?

Crikey, let's hope they don't bring back the Prst1!!!

Why do you grease the outside of a bearing. Honest question, cos aren’t they the bits that stay still, or is it to keep water out.
Headset and spacer choice is bad. It’s as far as I’ve got.

Is it grease or anti-seize? (Shimano anti seize also has a brush in the cap) I sometimes use a very light smear of anti-seize / anti-fretting compound to stop non-press fit bearings creaking in the frame / housing.

Looks like it was a fun overall project so why not, but I'd be more interested in seeing a video of the frame being designed and made rather than just some dull final assembly.