acoustophile

I recently acquired this great condition Kuwahara 4.5 Savage and turned it into mtbmx/grocery getter. I know that the Savage was Kuwahara's MTB range but can't seem to find much more information on this. I found some German catalogs from the early 90's (90-92) but this model wasn't listed and based on the geometry I'm sure that it's probably from the 80's. I also heard that Kuwahara had regional differences between countries and from what I can find on Google, this model seems to be most popular in SouthEast Asia as well as Canada. The other odd thing is that this model has chainstay mounted U-brakes. The rest of the components are Exage 300 LX (7speed, originally had biopace front drivetrain), which I think can range from 89'-92'. Does anyone have a better idea?

Clang

I've been thrown off when seeing chainstay U-brakes on bikes that don't show up in the catalogs but appear to be post-1988, but T-Mar has told me that some manufacturers continued to spec them on bikes with the smallest frame sizes (like yours seems to be) to avoid heel strike issues. Specialized is one example, and Kuwahara may be another. Shimano date codes can be found here https://www.pedalpedlar.co.uk/blogs/...ano-date-codes , keeping in mind that a date code from late 1990 might be a 1991 model year bike.