Originally Posted by
3speed
My frame does have a Tange
#5 sticker in the standard spot on the seat tube, just under the top tube. You can certainly tell they used robust tubing when you feel the weight of the frame. This thing is a beast compared to my road bikes. The couple things I find odd about it are that doesn't have a second set of water bottle mounts on the seat tube, which other pictures I've found of the bike have two water bottle mounts(down-tube and seat-tube). And that it seems to be chromed on the lower half of the fork blades and on the seat and chain stays. Everything else about the bike certainly seems to fit, from lugs to dropouts to original headset and BB. Those couple oddities must have just been a weird variance in production?
The mid-1980s were the 1st generation of mass produced ATBS and they tended to overbuild them. They knew they were going to be highly stressed but they really didn't have any idea of the loads, so they erred on the side of caution. As they gained more experience and feedback, they started to pare the weight.
My literature also shows a set of bottle bosses on the seat tube and no chrome. However, this was before they developed offset cages that could fit over a front derailleur clamp. Consequently, both bosses sat above the front derailleur and this could cause tight fits on small frames, so small sizes sometimes had to do without or had the 2nd set placed on the down tube. Alternately, the variations in these features could be manufacturer dependent. As I started earlier, this isn't the typical manufacturer for Diamond Back of the era.