Bontrager Road Lite - Part Deux

This Road Lite frame is the second one that I've owned. After selling my original Bontrager in 2002, I started missing the old bike. Bontrager frames have been a favorite of mine since living in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-90's. I keep my eyes open for unique Bontrager frames, and when unusual ones come up for sale it's difficult to resist buying them. That's whet happened with this one.

Bontrager introduced the Road Lite with the 1995 catalog. The frame used traditional road geometry with the exception of a sloping top tube, which was a reflection of the mountain bikes that Bontrager had become famous for producing. According to the catalog, many of the tubes used to build the Road Lite where shared with the Race Lite mountain bike frame. The 1995 frames were a bit different from the later frames in that they do not have slotted cable stops, but use the older style "step down" ferrules. Also there is a pump peg on the head tubes, a feature which was later dropped. The gussets, which are also a reflection of Bontrager's mountain bike heritage, existed on all Road Lite frames regardless of year.

As mentioned above, my frame is a bit unusual. It has all of the features of a 1995 frame; however, Road Lites came with a "wishbone" mono-stay and my frame has traditional seat stays. According to Kirk Pacenti, the master welder at Bontrager when these were being made, the Road Lite was never offered with this seat stay configuration. His guess is that this frame was built by a shop employee. The oddity of having the unusual seat stays, combined with the orange powder coat (which is my favorite Bontrager color) was enough to make me purchase the frame. I built it with mostly spare parts that I had on hand, and I had it on the road by October of 2009 - roughly seven years after selling my first Road Lite.

The frame has clearance for relatively wide tires. My plan is run oversized tires and use it as my foul weather, road/dirt mixed terrain road bike. To date I only have 25mm tires on it, but these will increase to 28mm or 32mm in the near future. The sloped top tube an thin steel tubes give the bike a distinctive look. The ride is nice, comparable to (although not as nice) my Ritchey Road Logic.

- el 10/2009