Hi, I have a bike frame that the decal says it has Specialized Direct Drive Off Road Tange CRMO tubing. Does anyone know what that is? Straight gauge 4130?
The decal looks like this:

I have a Rock Hopper with the same. I've always assumed that to be straight gauge, garden variety. Very robust. Hopefully someone knows more about this than I'm able to offer...

That's kind of what I was figuring. I've also seen decals that say Direct Drive Prestige and Direct Drive Custom Butted, which leads me to believe ours is simple straight gauge. I know mine takes a 26.8 mm seatpost, but not much more than that. Not that it really matters, I was just curious as I think about building the frame (a 1993 Sequoia - not as cool as the original ones but cooler (to me) than the more recent aluminum models).

Specialized liked to coin a unique name for their bikes tubing that didn't pin it down to one supplier or manufacturer. Direct Drive was one of those names and it could be used for Tange-supplied tubing or same spec tubing from another source. It was seamless, drawn, and butted 4130 CrMo and that's what's important. The double butted tubing gages were typically 0.9-0.6-0.9, which is robust but reasonably light, and resulted in a 26.8 seatpost size for a standard 28.6 seat tube diameter. Tange Prestige, which was heat treated CrMo, could be drawn thinner and had gages as thin as 0.4, was top of the Tange line. Most likely no production Specialized bike used the thinner tube gage. The Direct Drive moniker was used for the Mark DiNucci designed road bikes from the early 90's that featured oversized (OS) tubing and DiNucci-designed custom lugs. The OS tubing was also being used on mountain bikes. Tange Prestige OS was available but Giant, a manufacturer of Specialized bikes at the time, also produced their own seamless double-butted tubing - so a "Direct Drive Custom Butted" label could refer to this "house-brand" of tubing.
Prior to the "Direct Drive" name, when Specialized moved their bike manufacturing sources to primarily Taiwan, they used other custom labels. Here's the one from my 1987 Allez, which almost certainly was manufactured by Giant and used Giant produced tubing.
IMG_5638sm by Jim Harris, on Flickr

Lots of interesting information here on specialized tubing. My 1991 specialized team stumpjumper is made of direct drive tange prestige tubing with a direct drive chrome moly fork and I believe rear triangle as well. I seriously doubt the main triangle is drawn as thin as 0.4 given that it is a mtb. Still it is very lightweight for a mountain bike:

That's good to know, thanks. I just hadn't seen any descriptions of that tubing, so I didn't know what it was. It makes sense that they'd use their own name so they could swap out tubing at will to find whatever was cheapest, but it seems odd then that they'd do that, but also put Tange on some of the labels (like mine). That kind of limits their ability to swap things out, but I suppose there are multiple different types of tubing that Tange makes that they could still swap between while giving a brand to make it seem good.

I've had a hard time finding good catalogs from 1993 that describe the Sequoia. I know it's not top of the line like it was when it came out in the 80's but was trying to figure out how to place it. If the Stumpjumper had the Direct Drive Prestige, but the Rock Hopper had the same Direct Drive Off Road, maybe the Sequoia was roughly the same level as the Rock Hopper. Essentially a 29er Rock Hopper with braze ons for touring. Well, maybe, since I can't find anything to compare their geometry.

My 2001 or 2 aluminum Hardrock says "Direct Drive Enhanced Butted Aluminum" on the chain stays and "A1 enhanced butted aluminum" on the down tube. I certainly didn't think it meant anything but marketing, but if it did mean something I'd have thought from the placement tgat it was about the rear triangle and specifically the chain stays. That's where the drive is, after all.

There's a German Language 1993 catalog from here: https://www.retrobike.co.uk/gallery2/...ec_Bikes93.pdf It shows the Sequoia as pretty much a city bike. The specs are on the last page.

As far as the aluminum versions go - in 1993 that was the M2 series of off-road bikes and it grew to the road bike in 1993, IIRC.

HtH - Jim

A1 Direct Drive Extra Super Buttery Whatever with stealth baby photo. Remember Sun Microsystems workstations? I guess those are C&V, right?

Untitled by
Darth Lefty, on Flickr

Untitled by
Darth Lefty, on Flickr

Untitled by
Darth Lefty, on Flickr