- 30 years ago, back in the early 90s,
mountain bike suspension was a relatively new concept,
and on the path to the modern bikes we have today,
the slingshot was born.
(upbeat rock music)
Though this is not a custom bike,
this is not a prototype or experimental bike,
you could buy this,
and not only that, it was pretty high-end at the time.
Slingshot Bikes had a professional race team
that participated in cross country and downhill
on the same bike.
And as you can see where the down tube is supposed to be,
there's a cable attached with a cotter pin and a spring,
and then up here where the top tube meets the seat tube,
there's this little dog bone flex-y thing,
and that was their idea of suspension.
And it worked.
(upbeat rock music)
According to one of the racers I spoke to,
this bike was thought up in the 70s or the concept was.
One of the founders of Slingshot
was riding around a minibike like a motorized little bike,
and the downtube snapped, and the bike stayed together
'cause there were other tubes still intact,
and he was just feeling it and saying,
"Hey maybe it would be a good idea to engineer
"something like this, but less sketchy."
Now in forums, I've seen people refer to this as a dog bone,
a flex board, it's actually called a flex plate,
and it's made by 3M,
and it is the point on this bike that actually flexes,
and creates the compliance that gives it a smooth ride.
Now they engineered it to just flex up and down,
but it actually flexes in pretty much every direction.
If you ever worn out one of these,
it can get really, really sketchy,
and so people would replace them back in the day.
It looks like it's attached with this quick release skewer
and these bolts, but it's actually epoxied into the bike,
and changing it out requires scraping out the old one,
getting all the old pieces of epoxy out of the frame,
and then I suspect it'll be really hard
to find one of these in 2022.
Now it speaks to the era that this bike was made in
that there is a quick release to take the entire bike apart,
but there is no quick release on the seat clamp.
That's pretty hilarious,
but back then there was really no difference
between cross country and downhill,
and so this bike handled it all.
(calm jazz music)
So yeah, for its day,
this bike was able to take anything you threw at it,
but I was advised to kind of go easy on it.
(calm jazz music)
For one, it's got this 30-year-old flex plate
that may have experienced some fatigue over the years,
and also some other strange parts that really dated,
for example, this composite stem.
(upbeat music)
What kind of composite it is, I don't know,
it might have some carbon involved,
might have experienced fatigue, as well,
but even sketchier than the 30-year-old composite stem
are the carbon bars.
These would've been considered very new
and high-end in the 1990s.
And we just didn't do carbon as well as we do now.
Back then, anything made of carbon looked like carbon fiber,
like they showed the weave in it,
because it was a novelty and you wanted to show it off,
you didn't wanna spend all that money on a carbon part,
and people not realize that it was carbon.
And it also kind of weakened a little bit over time.
Not the carbon itself,
but whatever kind of material was holding it together.
And so when I first stepped on this bike
to take it for a ride, I was a little bit nervous,
but I'm pretty impressed how it's been performing.
This bike actually feels really good for a 90s bike
with just the suspension fork.
(bike wheels whirring)
Bikes from this era aren't even as mountain bike
as a modern gravel bike is.
(bike wheels whirring)
Whew.
Oh, I can feel the flexing for sure.
(upbeat rock music)
Now I have ridden quite a few 90s mountain bikes,
and I have been fortunate enough to ride good examples
of 90s mountain bikes.
This ranks near the top.
It could be because it has so many good,
high-end components on it,
or it could be because of that compliance.
It's actually really, really smooth.
As far as examples of a working slingshot bike,
this is about as good as it gets,
aside from the mismatched tires,
and the platform pedals that I threw on it,
it's pretty period-correct,
and everything is working really nice.
It climbs like a dream, and it feels really good
at speed when you're going over chatter.
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The really technical stuff is when it shows its age,
partially because the wheels are so small,
the suspension doesn't have a lot of travel,
the chain drops all the time,
the derailleurs didn't have clutches back then,
but there are some really good things about how old it is.
First of all, it's got an ancient three by nine drive train
that's still really smooth,
and for climbing it's kind of great.
Also, I find the seating position
on these older mountain bikes really comfortable
for climbing, maybe not so much for going downhill
on something really steep, and it's pretty light.
This bike's made a steel, back in the early 90s
most race bikes were made of steel, and it's done very well,
it would be rare to see a steel tube that was shaped
like this top tube.
The bike is missing a downtube,
so there's some weight savings right there,
and not only does this bike have all this compliance
built into it,
but steel also has very good vibration damping qualities.
And so when you're riding this bike where you should,
that is to say smooth-ish, flowy terrain,
it just has a ride quality that you can't get today.
(calm music)
Now would I take this bike out on a ride
just for the heck of it?
Yeah, I think so,
but it would be a novelty ride,
and it would be a novelty ride for a lot of reasons.
For one, all the limitations that I mentioned before
of a 90s bike, the geometry was more similar
to a road bike than a modern day mountain bike.
The integrity of some of the parts is sort of questionable,
and so I can't really let loose on it,
and rim breaks are something else.
Now, I'm not a very big fan of rim breaks.
If you are old enough to remember rim breaks
being the only option as opposed to disc breaks,
you know they're just not as smooth,
they're not as reliable,
but these were some of the best rim breaks
that you could have gotten at the time.
And they feel it, they feel very good,
plenty of stopping power.
It's also got a rock shocks indie, in the early 90s
when they were racing these things professionally,
it would've probably just had a rigid steel fork,
but a lot of people that built these a few years later,
they did add suspension forks.
Now I was lucky enough to talk to a couple of racers
who raced these professionally,
and this flex point would've offered more compliance
in the rear than it would have in the front.
What it would've been called is a unified rear triangle.
So this piece over here, the rear triangle,
it's all one piece, your crank set,
and your rear wheel are attached to that same piece.
Now if you look at a modern full suspension mountain bike
most of the time your crank set
and your rear wheel are attached to two different pieces.
And there's a reason we do it like that now,
there are situations where this bike
is just flexing all over the place,
and the platform that you're standing on
is kind of separate from the handlebars,
and so the bike can twist in some pretty weird ways.
Even today, there are bikes that have technology
that are sorta like this.
There's some gravel bikes that have flex points,
and honestly, that's what this bike
would probably be best for in 2022,
would be riding on a dirt road or someplace
where there are a lot of small bumps in quick succession.
This excels at that, better than a lot of bikes today do.
(electronic music)
And so this slingshot bike is an excellent example
of experimental technology
that didn't really stand a test of time,
but made a big splash while it was here.
I had a lot of fun with this slingshot bike,
I bought it so that I could show it to you guys,
and it actually costed me a lot of money,
because it's a good example,
and so I'm gonna be selling it on my eBay store
for a little less than I bought it for.
When it's up there, the link will be below,
and you could be the owner of my slingshot bike,
it is in very good condition, I tested it.
Jasen and Andrew, thank you for imparting your knowledge
of the Slingshot bike onto my audience.
I hope you guys enjoyed this deep dive
into some weird 90s technology.
I hope you learned something today, and if you didn't,
I hope you at least found it entertaining.
Thanks for riding with me today, and I'll see you next time.
(calm music)