A Stumpjumper Diversion

I've mentioned this old 1st-generation Stumpjumper on the blog a few times over the years, but recently a reader asked to see and read more about it. I've never devoted much blog space to the old Stumpie, but it's a pretty cool old bike, so why not?

The bike was a replacement for me for another vintage mountain bike that got destroyed in an unfortunate roof rack incident. That bike was a Schwinn Paramount PDG bike. The PDG, or Paramount Design Group, bikes were made for Schwinn by Panasonic/National Mfg. as opposed to the Paramount shop in Waterford, Wisconsin. It was a really nice bike, so the accident was particularly tragic. The frame was folded in half, but most of the components were salvageable. I found this old Stumpjumper soon after, and it was cheap, but it was awfully rough-looking. I stripped it all down and took it to a powder coating shop where they coated it in this shocking green (I call it "Kawasaki" green - as it's very similar to the color on their racing motorcycles). Then I built it up using a lot of the parts I had taken off the Paramount, with a few changes or "updates." I'll highlight much of that as follows.

I originally used the bike as my kid-hauler - with a Burley trailer attached, or later, a Trail-a-Bike trailer (and sometimes both simultaneously!). It's now the bike I usually grab for relaxing rides with my kids on the canal towpath in the national park, or I'll attach my flatbed trailer and use it for hauling groceries (including big jugs of water).

This bike was probably from 1982 and has the distinction of being one of the first mass-produced mountain bikes to hit the market. As you can see, the geometry on these early models was really slack. I could be mistaken, but the head and seat tube angles are probably somewhere around 68 degrees. That matched the geometry of the original mountain bikes when they were first created in Northern California. And that geometry was used because it pretty much mimicked the geometry of the old Schwinn heavyweight "tank bikes" that those California guys were converting into off-road "Klunkers." I've heard (but can't confirm) that Mike Sinyard of Specialized took an early Tom Ritchey-built mountain bike to Japan and basically said something like "make me a few thousand of these." Though Tom Ritchey's bikes were beautifully constructed, these early Stumpjumpers have some nice build details in their own right.

One of the cool details on the early Stumpjumpers was this "bi-plane" fork crown. It had a lot more character than the welded "unicrown" forks that would soon follow (and all to be replaced by suspension forks within a few years after that). You might be able to see that I have a twin-legged Pletscher kickstand holding the bike up. That was really helpful when loading up trailers that were often hooked up to the bike.

I also really like the lugged construction. This seat lug, with the seat stays attached to the binder "fastback" style, is a lovely detail that was dropped after a year or two. It wasn't long before lugged construction like this totally disappeared on mountain bikes - replaced by tig-welding. Nothing wrong with welding, but lugs lend so much more visual interest.

The lugs at the head tube are simple but nice, too. Also, although the frame tubes look positively "skinny" by todays standards, they were actually slightly oversized for the time. The top tube and down tube are both ⅛-inch larger than typical "road" tubes of the time.

One change I made to the typical mountain bike equipment was to add mustache bars. That's a Nitto "dirt drop" riser stem getting the bars up near the level of the saddle. I have Mafac road brake levers mounted, and Rivendell "Silver" shift levers mounted at the bar-ends. The bell is a large Crane "Big Hammer" which is one of the loudest bike bells I've seen/heard. The extra loud "ping" cuts through crowds of earbud-wearing pedestrians like nothing else - a great thing on the towpath.

Sugino AT crank, SunTour XC derailleur, and some cool old pedals. I think the pedals are from Sakae, and they have a neat little grease fitting in the body for maintenance.

Late '80s SunTour XC derailleurs came off the old Paramount. So did the wheels with SunTour hubs and Sun Mistral rims.

I have a Brooks Flyer saddle (basically a B-17 with coil springs underneath), and a well-aged Carradice saddlebag attached. I've covered the bag with badges and pins from the trail or bike shops (and a few were home made from beer bottle caps). 

These early Stumpjumpers only came in dark blue (as this one was) and maybe silver - but the shocking green looks so cool on the bike that it seems like a natural. It gets attention - mostly positive. I've got plastic fenders mounted on it and they work well enough - though the gap between the fenders and tires is more than I like to see. I originally had fatter tires on the bike, and the "fit" was better - but then I changed to more "road-oriented" tires and never bothered to re-fit the fenders. I may go back to fatter someday.

Hope you enjoyed the closer look at my old Stumpie.