A couple of months ago, I wrote a 3-part series on the subject of 3Rensho’s various forays into aluminum bicycles. Their earliest product remains their most well-known, a collaboration with Sakae Ringyo to sell their Litage aluminum bike under the 3Rensho brand. You can learn all about them in this article. Today’s entry is a brief update to show off the finish build of the 3Rensho Litage I restored. Read on for more details and photos!
Photo courtesy the Vintage 3Rensho Love blog
In my last two articles I showed how 3Rensho, a brand synonymous with the finest handmade steel bicycles, added aluminum bicycles to their lineup thanks to third-party manufacturers like SR and Yamakuni. Now I’d like to take a deep dive into an even more esoteric corner of the 3Rensho story: carbon bikes. This time around I am relying more than ever on 3Rensho’s catalogs, as it’s been extremely hard for me to find examples of these bikes in the “real world” that have been photographed and shared online. I’ve identified three models so far: the SR Litage with carbon tubes, and two monocoque designs from Aegis/BIK and Araya. Read on to learn more!
In this multi-part series of articles, I’m going to explore one of the more obscure corners of the 3Rensho story: aluminum-framed bikes. The 3Rensho brand is generally associated with steel-framed bikes of the highest quality, often hand-made and utilizing proprietary lug designs that make then instantly identifiable. However, from time-to-time, aluminum frames with 3Rensho logos surface in online sales or fan pages. This typically leads to a rambling debate about whether they are “legitimate” 3Renshos and who manufactured them. I can say with 100% certainty that they are legitimate, as they appear in multiple 3Rensho catalogs that I’ll share here, as well as shedding some light on their background.
In this first part of the series, I’ll focus on the most common aluminum 3Rensho: the Sakae Ringyo Litage. Read on for more info and photos!