[Tame Ape]

I was wondering about elevated CS bike of yesteryear. What happened to them? How come they got dumped?

I am thinking about building one for my XC/style/kitsch bike. Right now I have some sort of older GT that I very literally found on the street near my apartment in the city. I stripped it, cleaned it and put a shockster on it. I then thought better of it and bought some used parts, some new parts and turned it into my XC/playbike.

This sucker is fun to ride as long as the psylo is set at 3 inches, otherwise it flops like a chopper. It uses rimbrakes and a perfect spraycan powdercoat.

So I want to find a medium sized elevated CS bike. Something like an Yeti Ultimate or a Nishiki Alien.

Point me towards more!!! or show pics!!!!

 

[EBasil]

Also look for the Fisher 90/91 Montare and the Alpinestars AL-Mega and Cro-Mega from 93/94. Both of those E-stay designs also featured curved seat tubes to enable ultra-short chainstay lengths and long top tubes.

I think E-stays disappeared from hardtails for a few reasons:

--it makes the frame heavier, and the chainsuck and chain slap issues can be dealt with otherwise;
--it makes the BB more flexible, since it loses the triangulation of the c-stays;
--on curved seat tube bikes, it required braze-on style derailleurs.
--on the versions with ultra-short effective c-stay lengths, the chainline variation became so severe that it was very difficult to get good shifting and, once Shimano Rapidfire came about it was practically impossible.