1986 Ross Mt. Whitney
This was the first mountain bike that we saved back to put in the museum. A local customer brought this in to us in the early 1990's and traded it in on a (then) new carbon Trek. The bike was old enough that it had minimal resale value so we just hung onto it. We had been collecting older balloon tire and Stingray bikes for awhile and always admired the collections of the folks who started collecting those bikes when they were just "obsolete" bikes. In the early 1980's, you could buy all the Stingray bikes you wanted for $50 and the forward thinking collectors scooped 'em up. By the time they became popular, collectors had hoarded all the super cool bikes which also increased the prices of the more common bikes. It is hard to build a large collection when you have to pay the premium prices. Using this logic, we figured it might be time to start putting back a few mountain bikes. Some of the bikes that retailed for thousands of dollars when new were selling for a couple hundred dollars which made them affordable enough to collect them. This bike was very clean and pretty neat looking so it became mombatbicycles.com bike #1.
Ross was one of the biggest names in the early days of mountain bikes and had a nice line of reasonably priced rides. I have been told that the fillet brazing on these frames was more cosmetic and was applied over top of a TIG welded frame. Maybe somebody can confirm that story? The Ross "eyeball" stems were pretty neat and look similar tot he much pricier Cooks stems. Other than that, this bike uses almost the entire Suntour XC group including front and rear roller cam brakes.
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"Ive seen mountain bike rides transform people not just their bodies but their way of thinking. Their spirit." Charlie Cunningham
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