corrado33

I'm putting a small package together to send off to John over at landshark bicycles with pictures of my bike as well as tubing dimensions and other things to try to see if he can offer any more information on the Landshark I bought a few years ago. I could just call him, but I think pictures would be much better than me simply trying to explain things over the phone.

Anyway, I wanted to see if the sleuths here could help me narrow down a range of dates for this bike.

I'm going to apologize for the dirtiness of the bike now. I got caught in the rain earlier this week... And my bikes are meant to be ridden, not showpieces. The paint on this bike isn't perfect (as evident on the stays) but that's how I bought it, and I've caused no further damage. It's not like it's a paintjob that John is famous for (unfortunately, I love the typical crazy paintjobs on most landsharks.)

The bike has a full Shimano Dura Ace 7400 Groupset including hubs. It has an 8 speed cassette on the back and because of that I'm assuming it's spaced to 130mm. I, unfortunately, forgot to measure the diameter of the seattube/seatpost. I don't think the fork is stock, considering it's carbon fiber and I would have imagined this bike originally came with a threaded headset, not a 1 1/8" threadless. It has no tubing stickers on it, so I have no idea what it's made of... other than "steel." That's one of the things I'm trying to figure out. (Not that it matters, I like the ride of the bike regardless of tubing.) I've heard that old landsharks were made out of Tange? (I think I'm remembering that correctly.) but new ones were often made with Reynolds 753 or similar? Can anyone set me right there? I've also seen ebay ads claiming Columbus Max so who knows...

The bike has no serial number that I can find. (No surprise there) However, I did fine "LR05" in the casting of the left rear dropout. After googling it, I found the lugset on a website. Maybe some of the framebuilders here can tell me when that lugset came into popularity or when it was available?

Website Link

I know the sizes don't matter since this was likely custom built for someone (not me), but the seat tube is ~54 C-T and the top tube is 56 cm.

Anyway, I know I talk about this bike a lot, but I really now just want to figure anything about it that I can. I like to have information, and this bike is a mystery to me.

Bianchigirll 

..

corrado33

pcb 

Lotsa helpful pix, but I'm gonna guess that John will be your best source for estimated build date. Feature-wise, the socketed rear drops and seatlug-mount cable guides i/o dt shifter bosses all say late-'80s at the earliest to me. The Long Shen rear drop id is an even better clue, since there should be some way to figure out when they first starting selling/exporting lugs. Their website says they were founded in '86, but how quickly were they actively exporting lugs/parts? They might have started as a supplier of lugs/bits to Taiwanese factories?

The Golden Boy 

November 8th, 1975

Velocivixen

@Bianchigirll - WOW! Imagine if that was a real beast! Or some rare mythical creature. That would really scare the cr@p out of me.

paulkal

It has the shifter cable guides on the head tube, so it must be later than 1991, the year Shimano introduced STI.

pcb 

Very likely, though similar casing guides have been used on frames spec'd with bar-cons, which considerably pre-date STI.

9volt