Goat Ti

A month or so ago, Mark Lynskey stopped by the shop. Some of you might recognize the name from Lynskey Performance Bikes but most would remember the name as the founding family of the Litespeed brand. After the family parted way with Litespeed (and after serving an appropriate non-compete sentence)they are back building titanium bikes. Mark had a blast going through the archives and looking for ideas. The talk then turned to building titanium goodies for Mountain Goat.

We had Paul, of Rock Lobster fame, build us some bull moose handlebars out of steel. We had them made to fit the now-standard 1 1/8" thread less set up. We have a couple extra sets that we sell for $175. The bars are raw steel so they need to be finished. We talked about plating them and someone suggested that we could do them in titanium for not a whole lot more. When Mark got back to the shop, he drew up some bars. As soon as we finalize the drawings, we'll get some made up. Looks like $399 for the Ti bars.

We've contemplated the "stock" frame and came up with a couple of great ideas. We wanted to keep as much "goat-ness" as possible. The wishbone stays are pretty easy. Next was the head tube reinforcing rings and that is where it got tough. About the only way to make them work was to carve up a head tube to the tune of about $600......think we'll pass on that one. Next up was the finish. To me, there is something inherently wrong about painting Ti. Part of the appeal is the durability of the finish (no chips!). Fortunately, Lynskey has a really nice etching option that we really liked on their sample frame. We spend some time on the phone with David Cash, from Lynskey, and worked out a really nice scheme. We are going to duplicate the panels using the etching process. It will be like the team paint with top tube, down tube and seat tube panels. The top tube panel will feature the model name, the down tube will have the Mountain Goat logo and the seat tube has the goat head.

We are currently working on nailing down the details and hoped to have one ordered in the next couple of week.s Once we do, we'll check it out to nail down the final details and pricing. Expect somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,500 for the frame.