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Ok, so Chad Herrington hooked me up BIG time AGAIN.  I will stress the fact that Chad is one of the coolest people that I have ever dealt with and is the man!  :break:  Here comes the LONG back story on how I got this frame...sorry...lol...

Chad is a member on one of the other bmx sites and I have talked to him a lot via email/phone and he's given me tons of info on his bmx bikes.  One day he sends me a e-mail with a pic of the one and only Crusader MTB frame.  Then he tells me that he's interested in selling it.  At the time I didn't have the amount of $$ that he wanted...Another guy wanted it and I thought that Chad had sold it to him.  Months later, someone made a post saying that FBM wanted to build a new school crusader for Chad.  He said that he already put a order in with FBM for them to make him a frame with a crusader front end, but with modern "short and tight" geometry.  The frame is made from chromoly and Chad custom painted it himself.  When he posted pics of it, I commented on how sick the paint job was and he told me that if I was still interested in the Crusader MTB to shoot him a email....Before I go any further, here are some pics of Chad's custom made FBM frame with his custom paint job...








Chad and I ended up working out a deal for his mtb frame.  Here is some cool information about the frame.  The frame was shown at interbike 95 or 96 along side one of his custom painted (tiger striped) bmx crusader.  Chad believes that he was the first person to produce a bike with the "sweet spot" pivot on the bottom bracket.  He said that he was amazed by the attention that the bike was getting and one guy even stood there looking at it for 45 minutes!  The next year at interbike Chad said that several companies had "borrowed" the sweet spot pivot design.  Chad said that the frame manufacturer didn't build the frame to his specs.  The chainstay was supposed to have two tubes similar to the double cross design, but instead, he got a thin aluminum plate.  This made the bike un-ridable with the amount of flex which was a direct result of the thin aluminum plate chain stays. 

I asked Chad several other questions about his bikes and this particular frame.  As many of you know, a lot of the crusaders (pre-production) had some crazy paint jobs.  Chad did all of them, this amazes me...He has some crazy talent!  I asked him how the frame was built up at interbike and he told me that he had PMC cranks on it and a set of custom made handlebars.  Those were the only parts that he could remember.  He told me that he no longer had the bars, but when I opened the package up today, there they were!  He said he came across them after he told me he didn't have them!    A cool side note on the bars is that Chad thinks he used them on his GT in the Eddie Roman "Hammertime" video.  I am going to have to try to find it to see if those bars are on his bike!  When I sealed the deal with Chad on the frame, I told him that I'd like to keep the OG paint on there...he told me before that the paint job on the frame was supposed to be a different color than what it was and not the "ketchup and mustard" that it ended up as.  He also told me that the frame had gotten pretty scratched up over the years from moving it around and that he would re-paint it for me for free like his new FBM frame since he had some left over paint.  Who am I to say no to a custom re-paint from the designer?  After taking a look at some close up pics of the OG paint, I told him to go ahead and do the re-paint and it looks AWESOME. 

I am wondering if anyone remembers seeing or has the actual picture from interbike that shows this frame along side the custom tiger striped BMX crusader.  If you do, can you please post a pic?  I am going to eventually try to rebuild it back to the way it was in the picture (if I can find one) - Any help would be appreciated!  Here is a pic of the tiger striped 20" bmx and then a pic of the crusader MTB in the original finish...





Finally, here is a pic of the crusader MTB and the custom handlebars in the hands of Chad himself...Plus a few other pics after the paint job to show some different angles.  I would have taken better pics, but my camera is broken!  Maybe in a few days!