 whats it ride like?
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 For a 17 year old bike, better than you'd expect. Admittedly the 1" of travel at the front and rear doesn't exactly isolate you from trail shock, but imagine a really good alloy hardtail with 2.7" tyres on it and you're there. The high front end and flat bars put you in a decent heads up position, just like a modern bike with risers but this is a little more stretched that anything new. Overall it's very solid, suprisingly light and great fun!
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 That's fantastic Pete. You also have no idea how insanely jealous I am! I lusted after one of those only slightly less than the original Amplifier.
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 Fantastic effort. You complete nutter.
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 That is a brilliant story and a brilliant bike, I rode one back in the day and lusted after one ever since. Just something about bikes from back in the day that makes me go all funny, perhaps it's the fact I was a teenager the sport wasn't huge and trail centres didn't exist. Muchos Kudos to you fella!
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 This bike was made in the same year i was born 
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What do you want a prize 
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Now I do feel old.......
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 Wow. What a beauty.
I worked in Wheelies Cycles in Swansea many many years back and we did a couple of custom build Manitou bikes for customers. Both the Hardtail and the FS model like yours - they were stunning.
How much do you reckon you paid in total in the end to get it finished?
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 Lovely.. Jurgen Beneke's finest! Can we have Darren Tapp's Shock-a-billy next?
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Price is a hard one to calculate on this, so many parts came out of my spares bin that could have cost a fortune, like the NOS cooks cranks and rings, and other bits were trades or 'mates rate'. Frame was £150, forks another £100, rims and wheel build £70, overall probably just over £500. Not bad for a bike that would have cost several thousand back in the day. The great thing with this one is that it was made by Doug Bradbury himself rather than the later ones (92 onward) that were made by Answer after their buy-out of his company. Answer ones had a nasty habit of cracking and snapping because they went a bit too 'lightweight'. Black Heart Billy, I'm with you 100% on this, old bikes give you a real funny feeling that no modern bike can. I ride a beautiful Seven Ti as my daily ride, it's a far better handling, far smoother and much nicer bike overall but just doesn't 'ooze thing'like this does.
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MY MATE BOUGHT MY HARD TAIL ONE ME YEARS AGO, HE STILL GOT IT AND ITS IN MINT CONDITION, I WISH I NEVER SOLD IT I KEEP ASKING HIM IF HE WANTS TO SELL TS , NO CHANCE
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 Kerry, keep the cash, buy a keyboard with a Caps Lock key.
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 Its such a cool concept, I've been toying with getting a framebuilder to make me a modern version for a while, though I'm guessing it wouldn't work all that well......
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 I remember reading the article in MBUK about that Manitou bike,nice bike at the time.
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One bike I would love to get my mits on is the original GT RTS 1993? It was the utter sex
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 A friend of mine's brother has an RTS - it's been updated somewhat (V brakes, suspension forks that work), but when he brings it into most bike shops the staff still wet themselves over it - those frames are beautifully made, perfect fishscale welds everywhere, loads of nice detail, pierced top tube, linkgae passing through the frame etc. That was back when Gary Turner was still welding some of the GT frames himself ... I've got a 1989 Specialized Stumpjumper (Rigid naturally) and it's fantastic ... No other bike has made me feel more alive or like I'm going to die... The biopace chainrings, 7 speed thumbshifters and cantis with SLR 4 finger levers, OEM Specialized tyres and very level top tube combine to make this a proper blast from the past. No other bike I've ridden has repayed me so well for all the time I've spent working on weight shifting, hopping and tweaking the bike around stuff because as soon as you forget to account for a bump the bike hangs up and hangs up hard... The real danger is when I hit trails I know at speeds that would be usual for a modern hardtail and all hell breaks loose .
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I curse myself almost daily now for selling my Pace RC200 and my Kona Explosif. I'd slap my long haired student face so hard, if I knew I'd take up mountain biking again 15 years down the line
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 I miss my RTS. Bobbed like a really bobby thing, especially with the longer linkage I had made for it (gave me a whole 4" of travel), but I really loved that bike.
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