The Ritchey Project

I believe this to be a 1986 Ascent based on the majority of the components matching the catalog specs for that year. It does have updated M730 shifters and rear derailleur for indexed shifting, which I believe was probably done when the bike was very new still. The original XCII pedals were swapped for XC Compe. Very little wear on this bike when you look at rim sidewalls and drivetrain. Even has the original Quad 1.9 tires, though the casings are starting to crack and can’t be inflated to full pressure. That’s ok for a wall hanger.

I am curious about the manufacturing origin of this bike. I know most Ascents were partially built by Toyo Japan and the stays and finish work were done by Tom in Palo Alto. I’ve read that there were a few TIG welded frames either made in Tom’s shop or by other local frame builders. It seems Toyo frames had a fairly consistent serial number format Letter – Number – Letter – followed by 4-5 numeric digits. A few, like mine, have 3 numerals hand stamped under the bottom bracket. The other difference I have noticed is in the seat tube lug. All of the longer serial format bikes have a pointed lug and the 3 digit bikes use a straight cut lug. That is one clue to these bikes being built in different places. I would love to know if anybody has more information on what might be going on here. I e-mailed Ritchey’s contact us address through their website and got a fairly generic answer (Toyo tig’d the front triangles in Japan and Tom finished them in his shop).