That fork looks scary!!!!!!

Great story, and a one-of-a-kind frame.  Very cool.

I always loved the fork on the kastans. Love the bike

Here's some additional photos:

Was not stoked and still remember exactly where this happened. As you can see, I wrecked riding street one day and the Strut had a run-in with a curb:

Note the weld bead running down the side of the leg from the steerer tube. Part of the reinforcing brace that was installed on 2nd generation Struts:

The reinforcement brace goes up into the steerer tube to strengthen it:

Very unique hubs were made for the Strut. The bearings are interchangeable with the Redline Techmatic BB, and pretty much nothing else on earth as far as I can tell. The aluminum nut was also proprietary to the Strut. You can see marks on it from years of taking it on and off. Big upside was that you almost never had to remove it since you could change a flat without removing the wheel. That allowed for quick tube changes and prevented me from missing my main at a National in California in 1990:

Phil Wood hubs are simple, beautiful, and nearly indestructible American-made works of art:

I don’t think these Primo Pro Round pedals were sold for very long due to (if memory serves me right) problems with the spindle strength. They look nice and grip great though:

Profile XL Invert stem is, as with all Profile products, another work of art. Coming from race car fabrication, Profile had the know-how to do things right, and with all manufacturing happening in the USA, they have their eyes on quality control in a manner that is very difficult to replicate overseas. Thus, you have beautiful products with perfect attention to detail, pretty much 100-percent of the time:

S&M Slam bars are another good example of fantastic American-made craftsmanship. These bars (along with S&M Pitchforks) were on many pro racers bikes with their own sponsors decals replacing S&M’s. When it comes to the type of quality the worlds top racers could trust their life with, S&M won the race hands down.

The “Slam Dancing Guy” decal was my favorite Slam Bar decal, with the “Slam Dunk” being a close second:

Another view of the reinforcements on the Strut. Also note the front brake housing stop, which was replaced by Linn when he fixed the frame. The original had been crushed in a crash at Santa Clara PAL:

The seat post clamp is a great example of Linn Kastan’s amazing attention to detail, and desire to produce something that looks and functions great – even if it increases production time and cost. The seat clamp took longer to weld than any other part of the bike. It inspired the seat clamp on the 2014 GT EX frame (the KEX dropouts also inspired the dropouts on the EX frame). The KEX was one of the first frames to use a 25.4mm (1”) seat post (most bikes at the time used a 22.2mm (7/8”). Rather than taper the tube from 1” to 7/8” for the seat guts to fit, Kastan welded a 7/8” tube into the 1” tube:

A final shot of the complete bike. Note my “bike stand” is a can of Sixpoint Brewing Bengali Tiger, which has the unique benefit of allowing one to rehydrate after a photo shoot:

Last edited by bmxmarty (2013-10-30 8:42am)

Sickes Kastan ever!