Special steel mountain cruiser with fork "Mechanic's bike # 2"

Well , most custom bicycle frames could easily be considered 'special' but there are a few that I feel are something not in my usual catalog and require more thought and time- this frame and fork are just that. 

Back around 2007 I built a frame and fork much like this for our then team mechanic Ryan Bontrager. He was looking to get a 650 wheel MTB frame that looked like a pre-war Schwinn-I did the best I could at the time. The bike got stolen a few years later and has never been recovered. 

Maybe a year ago Ryan asked me about getting anoter bike from me- not a copy of the mechanic's bike that I had built years before but after a number of months and many differen ideas Ryan decided that he wanted a replacement of his old bike that I had made but with some improvements. I hope that this one really does the job.

The fork on the earlier bike was a bit too flexy so I built this one with some disc brake specific Tange fork blades. The frame has the look of the original but the geometry has changed- shorter chain stays and a slacker head angle should make this one behave better in the dirt. With luck he will be riding this as a complete bike in a few weeks , depending on how long the paint process will take. Ryan has been a good friend and has done me innumerable favors over the years and this frame is my attempt to pay some of that back.