Originally Posted by
jamesdak
So picked up this beast today. Hard to find much out about them except for some listings on the German Ebay site for this "brand". Didn't see one with all the features of this one though. Labeled Mars Trekking. Best I can figure is it's a German "department store" quality bike which of course isn't the same as a department store bike in the U.S.
Anyone see anything like this or have info on it?
Need to get a new shift cable and fix this mess that someone did to it.
The rear suspension setup
Looks like a Unified Rear Triangle (URT) design popularized by Trek's Y bike, around 97-99 (off the top of my head).
The advantages were: entire drivetrain is on rear triangle; no chain stretch, no varying f derailleur angles, one beefy pivot
The disadvantages were: standing or braking locked out the suspension, design had a falling rate
Eventually URT went to an air shock (rising rate) to "flatten" the spring rate but fully active linkage designs with less compromises soon became available.
That's a nice rack, BTW. Interestingly, many URTs used different materials for the frame and sub-frame. Your frame looks like Al, with a steel swing arm. Many high end URT bikes, reflecting the era, had steel fronts and Al rears.
The most famous of all URTs would be the pivotless Ibis Bow-Ti:
