There are a lot of interesting things about this build. What we have is an old school Mongoose with new school Crupi forks, I am guessing the bars are also Crupi, and some sort of vintage alloy cranks. The most interesting part however, is the all blue Mongoose Pro Class wheels.
What makes these Pro Class so interesting? Hmmmm….as far as I know, Pro Class wheels were only ever available in three finishes: regular aluminum, polished aluminum, and a smoke colored anodized (or some other type pf coating process). So how in the heck are there a set of blue ones on this build?
I started searching around trying to find out if I was wrong about Pro Class only being available in the three finishes mentioned above, and everything I found said I was correct. I also leaned that Mongoose had contracted with two separate rim manufacturers to have the hoops constructed: Araya and Sumo. Some of the production run from both manufacturers utilized existing rims, so you could find Araya or Sumo actually stamped into the spoke side of the hoop. I'm guessing the later runs are the ones that don't have the stamps.
Anyway, I just could not find any evidence that they were ever available in blue.
These wheels, if you are unfamiliar with them, have a large hole drilled out between every spoke hole in order to make them incredibly light, and they utilize a metallic rim strip with a glossy color coating which which you can see through the rim holes in order to give them some color. Below you can see the rim strip in action. This one is set up so that the red side shows through the holes. You can also see the unused blue side. You could change the color scheme of your wheelset just by flipping over the proprietary rim strip.
In my search to find out whether the rims for Pro Class were ever available in blue, I came across an eBay ad which had this set of wheels:
These are pretty much the exact wheels used on the frankenbike Mongoose build! If these were custom coated, clearly they were professionally done. They look great. Not only that but check out the valve stem home graphics:
Very nice right? It uses what looks like the correct font and definitely gives them an authentic factory production feel. However, along the way I couldn't find any other pics of Pro Class with this valve stem hole graphics. All I could find were a totally different rounded rectangle style.
So I'm perplexed? Are these customs? Am I just totally mistaken that they were never available in colors and if so, why can't I find any advertising or supporting evidence that they were?
The only downside of the whole mystery is that by this point in the game with wheelsets, manufacturers had wised up and started leaving the sidewalls uncoated since caliper brake shoes would end up destroying the finish pretty quickly, and the frankenbike above def has handbrakes.
I would be glad to hear any info you may have about whether pro-Class were ever available in colors, and if not, any info on who is making the custom refinished ones would be rad!
I had also wanted to get into the crankset on this bike, but I can't tell a lot about what manufacturer they are from via the pic above. If you have any info on that I'd love to know. Are they from the Campagnolo BMX groupo? Are they some sort of repurposed track bike crankest?
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