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!
Translation: “With a basic weight of 8.9kg, the 7000 series aluminum frame produces the lightness and stiffness required for racing.”
In part one of this series, I covered 3Rensho’s entrance into the aluminum bicycle category, a re-badged SR Litage. In this second chapter, I’ll be exploring what came next: welded aluminum frames from Yamakuni. If you want to skip ahead, click here for part three, which covers 3Rensho carbon bikes.
In the early 1990s, TIG-welding was rapidly eclipsing the “screwed and glued” method of aluminum bicycle frame construction. At the same time, aluminum frames were enjoying peak popularity among professional racers, being ridden to victories in the Tour de France and other major events. This was the era of stiff, lightweight aluminum race bikes with extra-skinny tires, and 3Rensho was not going to be left behind. Enter the Yamakuni 7000 bicycles, which would replace the SR Litage in the final years of 3Rensho. Before we get there, let’s dig into a brief history of welded aluminum frames after the jump.
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 them 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!