kabuki_joe

Just took my bike to the shop to get it tuned-up. It's a Kabuki 10 speed from the late 1970's with at least a partial stainless steel frame. The guy at the shop said he'd never seen one of these in the 20 years he's worked on bikes.

I was wondering if anyone can give me an idea of what this bike is worth in good condition? The last time I had it worked on, the bike shop wanted to buy it from me. Never got into price with them, since I'm not lookiing to sell it. Lots of sentimental value.

SD Fixed

From Shedlon Brown's cooler than water web site.

"Kabuki
When Japanese bikes were in high fashion, many companies went out of their way to market bikes under Japanese-associated names, including Lotus, Mikado, Shogun, and probably others. Kabuki was a trade name of Bridgestone (a Japanese company with a non-Japanese name!)
The Kabuki line used some unusual construction techniques, specifically, they had a system of sticking the frame tubes into a special mold and forming cast aluminum "lugs" in place around the ends of the tubes. The most notable of this line was the "Submariner" which used un-painted stainless steel tubing, and was marketed in seacoast areas for its rust-resistance. Because the cast aluminum lugs were not flexible like steel lugs, these bikes didn't use a conventional seat-post binder. Instead, they used a seatpost with an expander wedge like that of a handlebar stem...you had to remove the saddle from the seatpost to adjust the height, then re-install the saddle! Even sillier, many of these frames had what looked like a conventional seatpost bolt mounted in a projection of the rigid lug, simply to provide a place to mount a cable stop for the center-pull caliper brake!

Tiger88

It's a Kabuki submariner, value in late 1970's were about $140-160. I had a friend who owned one and he replaced most of the parts on it that time because frame was so heavy.

I'd be interested in seeing a pic of it if you have it.

legalize_it

i have the same bike, but its a c.itoh instead of kabuki....has shimano 600 on it, including cranks and pedals, with a beautiful anodized black dura-ace rear hub. was a dumpster find so it was missing the front wheel. i kinda have an idea what happened to the front bc the where the top and down tubes meet the headtube is slightly buckled. needless to say this was in a bad head-on collision, and i have only rode it once, b4 i noticed the buckling. im currently searching for an 80s japanese road frame to put the shimano 600 on. hopefully ill find a nice miyata or shogun maybe...

if anyone has any 70's frames lying around, japanese or not, lemme know!!!

rleif

I have a Kabuki submariner from about 76. I might be interested in selling it.

legalize_it

i might be interested in buying it!! what size frame? any pictures? are you thinking of selling it complete or just the frameset? does it have dura-ace hubs? price? you can reply to this thread or PM me....either way ill see it!