Hi everyone! I am new to the forum and I am looking for some advice or assistance. I was an avid bike rider in my younger years, then, well life happened. I was never able to get my hands on one of these, I started a family and priorities changed. Now my two boys are getting older and love to take bike rides! My personal life and career have stabilized so I thought why not go after one of those life long dreams, right? So I’m reaching out to the experts here to see if anyone knows where I could find one. Unfortunately it won’t let me post a photo until I have 10 posts minimum, but it’s a Diamondback DBR yellow V6 team version (from 96 or 97?) I’m 6’2” so the hunt for the large frame has been a challenge. Thanks so much to everyone in advance for any assistance!

Tim

Hi Tim, welcome aboard, glad you found us.

Go around, say "Hi" and or comment to get you post count up. We like to say "pics or it didn't happen" so they are key and most of us can't help enough without them.

I am in the same boat on height, not a giant at 6ft. but with a 37in. inseam I can ride 66-68cm all day long, Most of mine are 60-64 which work ok but I got 2 bigger ones last summer and was amazed how much better they rode for me, never really knew since I had ridden smaller ones most of my life.

You might want to post this in the Vintage MTB thread as well even though its probably not quite vintage, they have progressed a lot in this time frame so....

Thanks so much! I am very excited to get acclimated with this forum. Thanks for the advice!!

Welcome and looking forward to the photos!

Off the top my head I would suggest Ebay, local CL, FB market place and if you have a bike Co-op in your town they can be a wonderful place to stumble across Vintage Gems and parts. Also if you are a paying member of Bike Forums, like $5 a year, you can post a WTB (wanted to buy) in the Classic and Vintage for sale forum to get the word out to bike nerds nation wide. Welcome and good luck in your hunt.

Pretty Excited!
Just wanted to start by saying I love this forum. Very knowledgeable people, and very helpful! So I took the advice and looked on CL and I found what I was looking for! I was originally looking for yellow V6 Team, but found the 97 DBR Pro in black. I know, it’s not some world beater bike for today’s time frame, but it’s in great shape and has XTR components. I fell in love with this bike in my “younger years” and was pretty shocked when I had the chance to get it. Not sure if I want to restore to original or customize it. What’s everyone thoughts on this? Thanks again for everyone’s help, I’m sure I’ll have many more questions!!

I'm a purist so almost all my bikes are restored to original so I vote back to original. Nice find!

Here’s what it looked like 22 years ago...Yikes I’m getting old, lol!
Thanks! I’m kind of in the same mind set in setting it up to original. Lots I could do to customize, but to see it “as built” is what got me with this bile to begin with!

Great find! Sounds like it will be a rider. Does riding with your boys mean riding it hard offroad or just in the neighborhood? If riding it hard, try to get the shock and fork serviced (might be a little hard finding the replacement seals and such) or replace them with ones with similar travel and eye to eye length on the shock (might need to fab up spacers) and put the old ones in a box for when you eventually do restore it. And make sure to repack all the bearings. If just neighborhood or road riding, full restoration would be great and you have less likelihood of damaging your restoration.

It will start off with casual riding, but right now my oldest son is really getting into the some of the beginner and intermediate trails. He’s pretty good, much better than I was at his age. I did rebuild the shock (which amazingly was in great condition) with a rebuild kit from suspensionforkpart.net. Really clean inside and the old elastomer was still in tact, so relatively quick rebuild. Some air loss on the rear shock, so I have a seal kit coming from eBay, hopefully no issues there. I keep thinking go full on retro, but the old part are worth a small fortune, and some are tough to find. This will be an awesome project to get my sons involved with the original concept but might take some time considering the cost. In the end it’s going to be a labor of love, and not an investment this time around.

Awesome bike. I'm about to build up a '99 Schwinn Homegrown, made by Anodizing Inc in Portland. It's a hardtail but same era and components. I'm keeping some parts period but putting drop bars on it and doing a 1x11 drivetrain.

Man, that should look great, like the idea of the drop bars! Something about that era of bikes just oozes revolution...Or maybe it’s just me.

Awesome bike, congrats. I would throw a set of front brakes on (obviously) and ride it for a bit to get a sort of baseline of what you like, don't like, etc. I think you'll quickly sort out in your head what you want to do with it. As Trexx2002 said above, there's so much to geek out about with older MTBs. It was a crazy time when every manufacturer would just try anything.

Happy for you that the fork rebuild went smoothly. Consider replacement seals front and rear for your parts bin. Older suspension is not supported well and the future looks less promising.