I built this bike in 1991, when I was working for German Möhren's shop German's Mountain Bikes (Germany's first off-road only bike shop when it opened in 1986; now German's Cycles) in Heidelberg. Like most people, I wanted a light bike, but nothing too fancy. I certainly did not want to buy a stock bike off the shelf, so I spent several months looking at what was available.

The frame is a Sakae Litage. I chose the frame because it was relatively light, affordable, and because it looked very pretty. I especially like the nicely sculpted cable routing. The medium-diameter tubing and the simple clear coat combined to make a very elegant bike.

In the early 90s, Sakae also made a very similar road frame under the same name. I have little further information about Sakae. All I know is that they also made stems and handlebars, often under the name 'SR' or 'SR Sakae'. They were combined with Suntour in 1990 to form SR Suntour.

Many people confuse the frame with the Hagan 'Titanal', a similar looking lugged and bonded frame. The Titanal used welded tubes made out of Aluminum with some Titanium in the alloy, though, instead of seamless Al. The result was that the frames had to be recalled because they would crack at the seams very early. Hagan has since stopped making bicycles.

Until the major overhaul in the winter of 2000, the components were the regulars found on any good bike of that time, mostly 7-speed XT. Special items include a Specialized crankset (lighter than XT) with 48/36/24 rings (I hate Microdrive etc.), thumbshifters (which I still love), and ultra narrow Mavic MA 40 MTB rims. I am currently on my second set of rims (the last ones I have). Instead of barends, I chose one-piece Scott AT-3 bars. They are lighter than most bar/barend combinations, but the bend makes them rather narrow.

After about a year I added a Rock Shox Mag20 suspension fork. Since the frame is designed for a 395mm fork this raised the front end a bit, which does affect steering, but not enough to bother me. I lowered the fork legs in the crown a little bit and I used a smaller tire in the front (1.9" vs. 2.1" in the rear) to counter the change in geometry. I rode the Mag20 until new year's day 2001, when I upgraded it to a Mag20.5: I had been able to trade a bottle of champagne for a Mag21 on which the threads holding one of the brake studs had stripped, so I used the right fork leg from the Mag21 and the crown/steerer tube assembly and left fork leg from the Mag20. I will have the stripped threads repaired with HeliCoil thread inserts as soon as I get around to it. The opportunity for the fork upgrade came just in time, as the right main seal had recently begun to leak. See below for valuable tech tips for Mag-series forks.

CAUTION: 1992 Mag20s and Mag30s have been recalled after incidents of broken fork crowns. If you ride a 1992 Rock Shox Mag20 or 30, have Rock Shox replace the fork crown. They replaced mine free of charge even as late as 1999.

I had been thinking about replacing this bike with something more modern many times, but mostly when I had not ridden it for a while. As soon as I get on, I realize that it is all I need to be happy in the woods, so I always decide to keep it for yet another year. Thus, I will still hold on to it even after having bought my new full-suspension mount.

After a short interlude with WCW V-brakes (a copy of the '98 LXs, but with independent spring adjustment) with Caramba 'Smooth Operators' instead of the cable noodle, I have changed the brake setup again. This is the first major upgrade I have done to this bike in nine years.

As this is my foul-weather MTB, I got tired of having to replace the brake pads after two rides in the snow or extreme mud. Thus I added a Magura Julie disk brake in the rear and a Magura HS 33 Quicksilver in the front. I can't use a disk up front as the Mag20 of course does not have a disk mount (and it would be too flexible for use with a disk anyway). The 1991 frame didn't have an I.S. mount in the rear either, of couse, but both dropouts on the frame are replaceable (most frames only feature a replaceable derailleur hanger on the right dropout; another suitable frame for this type of upgrade would be the Giant 'Cadex'-series of MTBs from the mid '90s (Al and Carbon frames), which also had two replaceable dropouts). Thus, I had a friend manufacture a new dropout WITH international standard disk mounts. Come back for pictures of the new dropout soon.

The brake stops very well. Modulation is better on the Formula disk on my off-road tandem or the 2000 Magura Gustav M which is currently on the Tandem-Technology full-suspension tandem, but who is going to argue with a sub-$100 disk brake? Other changes made at the same time were: An XT-disk hub laced to a 32° Ritchey OCR rim, an 8-speed 11-32 SRAM 5.0 cassette (since the cassette was worn anyway I went to 8-speed at the same time), and a left RSX-RC Rapidfire Plus lever (as the XT thumb shifter wouldn't fit over the expansion chamber of the disk lever). As I wanted to build up the ultimate poor-weather bike, I replaced the shifter cables with GoreTex RideOn.

The bike now rides like new, better even, and it should stay like that through many rides in nasty weather!

Related tech tips:

• See here for a great technical page on the Rock Shox Mag series forks by Ola Helenius.

See here for tips on how to get up to 75mm of travel out of them (if you can stand Kristan Roberge's ego-inflated writing)