Originally Posted by
Kozeemoto
I don't know about the price, and this may be an old thread but the uniqueness of this bike puts it in a very special category, a very lonely one.
This was part of a line that Bridgestone called expedition, so the name reveals part of the intentions.
The wheels are not 28/700 but are 27. Probably 650b tires can fit. The space allows either wide offroad rubber or larger road wheels.
The rear brake was weird, like a drum, protected from mud, grass etc.
The frame is more of a cousin to Radac rather than to other Kabukis. The main tubes are stainless steel bonded into steel lugs. The Radac rf5** series had a hybrid aluminum frame with two top aluminum lugs and bottom steel with rear triangle being steel and also a steel fork. The other Radac's were all aluminum, still the same bonded technique that beat all others. There have been no reports of bonded Bridgestone frames coming undone even in destructive accidents. This frame has double eyelets for fenders and racks which reveals part of its identity. A good frame to use touring the coastline of Tasmania or something along those lines. Something ultra reliable that will not suffer from bad weather and flooded streets or mud roads.
Why is it called a sub-mariner? Not only for those three SS main tubes, the rest of the bike is also made of either ss or aluminum. The cables and jackets are also SS, and so are the rims. This bike can live in a boat for 50 years and require just lubrication. Even the cassette is made of SS sprockets.
Would it make a nice bike to ride? Probably not, but ask what bike would weather the marine environment for long.
So this is something very unique that requires a bit more respect and admiration. It would probably take 5 figures to construct and equip something like this these days. You can slap some aluminum components to a carbon frame and have ss nipples and spokes, but what about the rest of the components.
The Submariner frames were not bonded at least not in the traditional sense like on the Radacs. There was no adhesive involved. The lugs were aluminum, not steel, and were die-cast around the ends of tubes that were flared (to resist pulling out) and plugged (to prevent being filled with molten aluminum). This allowed Bridgestone to build frames using dissimilar materials and permitted more automation to reduce costs by eliminating most of the costly hand razing operations. The die cast lug technology was called Technart.
All the Submariners that I've seen have had stays and blades that were carbon steel, not aluminum. Kabuki and Bridgestone both offered an all aluminum model prior to Radac, It was called the Superlight and used the same Technart technology.
Kabuki was not a Bridgestone brand but was owned by C. Itoh, a Japanese trading company who imported and distributed both Kabuki and Bridgestone in many countries outside Japan, prior to Bridgestone setting up their own foreign divisions for bicycle sales and distribution. Bridgestone built many of the Kabuki bicycles for C, Itoh but not all of them.