Bike Page > My Bicycles> Fisher MountainBikes 1983 Montare

1983 Fisher Montare Mountain Bike

This was my first mountain bike. It was purchased in December of 1983 from Gary Fisher, who had a shop with a showroom that measured maybe 30' square. It was on the corner of Center Ave between San Anselmo and Fairfax. Gary loaned me a rain jacket so I could test ride it. My budget didn't allow for one of the expensive ones -- the Mt Tam ran around $1300, but the Montare was a Japanese made "production" mountain bike.

These first three pictures show it pretty much in stock condition within the first year of so that I got it - the second water bottle cage was a clamp on, as there was only one set of bosses on the downtube. The shot of the downtube is to show that I even had the original bottles (ok, they didn't make it through moving, storage, and the desire to get rid of really old waterbottles....) The tires shown in these shots were the originals, and if you look closely at the shot on the right, you'll notice that the Yakima rack hardware is silver. The Ross (Mt Whitney?) belongs to my friend Derek. Note the "correct" way to store your pump - behind the seat tube. Notice also the highly evolved tread pattern on the rear tire - that was pretty much it, tread-wise until the original "Ground Control" came out. That had an innovation called "side knobs", in addition to the block tread in the center. We were still a couple years away from the whole front/rear specific tread.

Changes made to this bike:
Installed a Blackburn Mtn Rack, which I proceeded to bend on the first crash. But after that it held up very well. I'd remove it for races to save weight. One of the the early techniques shared through magazines was sitting on the rack on steep descents, since then you wouldn't have the tire chewing your back end apart.
Saddles destroyed frequently, not by crashing, but because I kept cramming 'em back as far as the rails would allow. This resulted in tweaked rails and twisted saddle positions. Then the coolest aftermarket part came to my attention -- an SR seatpost with a QR for moving things fore and aft. Remember, you couldn't just swap over a stem to make these bikes fit differently.
Installed a Breeze-Angell Hite Rite, of course.

The Montare was the first production frameset through "MountainBikes". "Designed by Tom Ritchey" appears on the right chainstay. (the following year had "Designed by Gary Fisher"). Plenty of clearance in that frame, eh? The photo above left was probably pretty early on, as it still had the big motorcycle brake levers. At some point, I realized that they had a crack running through them, so I upgraded to some other levers.

Probably wrecked in every conceivable way on this bicycle. It was my first mountain bike, and probably my first "serious" and "seriously well built" bicycle. When out riding, the saying upon a horrific rag-doll crash was always, "Bike's fine". Invariably, it was. I was going to college down in L.A. during the first years that I had this bike.

Current Status:
In 1997, using it as a commute bike, I discovered a vertical crack in the right rear dropout. Currently, (5/01) it is stripped of parts, awaiting my taking it to a competent framebuilder to replace the dropout and match the paint.
5/15/01 - Took frame to Ed Litton in Point Richmond to repair dropout. He's of the opinion that the crack is weldable, since I had noticed it before it completely separated.
6/02 - Picked frame up from Ed - he had lost my phone number, and I had neglected to call him back for a bit. Dropout is beautfully welded, seems solid, and there is a minimum of effect to the paint. A wonderful job. Now, it's up to me to build the bike back up.

A few more historical photos:

Above left - on a ride out to China Camp Beach in 1984. This double-track was just about all of the trail system at that time. Above right - Rigid in Moab. I think this was a ride out to the Monitor & Merrimack. A sandy doubletrack out to a slickrock plateau.

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This page's Last Update: November 24, 2006

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