Chris King's Yeti A.R.C.

We’ve just got back from visiting Chris King in Portland. We had a good tour of the manufacturing facility, but we’ll save the story of the business for another time (and trust us, it’s pretty interesting) – for the time being, we thought you might be interested in checking out King’s personal Yeti A.R.C. – click the link to read and see more!

King got the bike in 1993 and was riding it until as recently as 2008 when he took it on a coffee tour of Brazil. It’s a bike he believes still compares well with modern bikes – it’s light, comfortable and efficient: “If you’re going on an epic cross country ride, do you want a 30lb all-mountain bike, or a 23 or 24lb near hardtail cross-country bike. I don’t know – am I a curmudgeon now?”

The bottom bracket is somewhat unique, in that only 20 were made as a prototype square-taper units. King’s bugbear with original square taper bottom brackets was the difficulty in setting up the chain line; this design simplified that by allowing you to adjust that chainline while the cranks were still on the bike. By the time King had the room to ramp up production, BB standards were changing and the market for this kind of design was dwindling, so it never saw the light of day beyond trade shows.

Like many aluminium bikes of its time, the frame failed at the headtube with a crack around the bottom cup, a problem King resolved with a reinforcing ring. Elsewhere, the bike sports original equipment, including XT thumbies, original SPD’s, early Chris King hubs and of course, a Chris King headset.

We forgot to make a note of the brakes – perhaps someone could inform us what they are?

We've put a couple of extra shots on Flickr including a shot of the brake levers attached to the canti's above, as well as a lovely pair of unused "ebony and ivory" (Chris DiStefano's words, not ours) Paul Components rear mechs. Go check them out here.