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| 3.4:1 gain ratio, 46.3 gear inches |
UPDATE: This Matt Chester MuTinyman served me well for many, many years but was officially removed from service and disassembled in August 2024 due to a fatal frame failure. Its major organs were donated to aid in the well-being and ongoing utility of several other bikes. Additional details about the deconstruction of the Chester can be found below.
Near as I can figure, Matt Chester, a resident of Leadville, Colorado, began fabricating and selling bicycles made from titanium tubing out of his home workshop sometime early in 1999. Per his now-mothballed website, he only built bikes from Ti, focused his work exclusively on singlespeed bicycles, and tried very hard (though not always successfully) to convince all of his customers to get their bikes built with 29" (700c) wheels. He refused to install disc-brake tabs, entirely shunned eccentric bottom bracket shells, yet nonetheless eagerly charged people for repairs to other manufacturer's broken or damaged titanium frames.
Also, near as I can figure, sometime around 2003, Matt Chester, now a resident of Salida, Colorado, had moved his operation down-valley to the south and was building his bikes in a friend's garage. It would seem that, around this time, Chester began to carry-out a kind of haphazard, perhaps even initially unintentional, deceptive scheme amongst his customer base, apparently taking new orders along with hefty deposits, purchasing tubing and supplies for older as-yet undelivered orders with the new-customer money, and hoping everyone, including his friend (a mutual friend of both of ours, as a matter of fact) who was leasing him shop space in his garage, would remain none the wiser (he did not; he got wise). As with most such schemes, Chester's seems to have eventually come apart, as he most likely fell further and further behind in fulfilling his orders. It appears he was at times years behind, failing to deliver to those who had put down $1000, $2000 or more, anything but empty promises of "Soon," proffered only after persistent pestering and almost always via email.
Finally, near as I can figure, by 2006, Chester's operation was likely failing in earnest, possibly due to the recurrent concussive traumatic brain injuries he occasionally complained of which rendered him unfit or unable to work, or possibly because he met a girl who lived in Canada and he chose to refocus his life-goals around being with her instead of making bikes, or possibly because he became fixated on the fact that, as a Canadian, she offered him a way out, beyond the reach of his increasingly disappointed and often angry customers and creditors. Regardless of his motivations, and with little forewarning, he announced mid-2006, on his now defunct Livejournal blog, that he was officially going to stop framebuilding, presumably with a number of orders still unfulfilled and deposits unreturned.
And now, a decade or two later...
We also know that, of the bikes that were delivered to customers by Chester between 1999 and 2011, many of the frames eventually failed.
Also, near as I can figure, sometime around 2003, Matt Chester, now a resident of Salida, Colorado, had moved his operation down-valley to the south and was building his bikes in a friend's garage. It would seem that, around this time, Chester began to carry-out a kind of haphazard, perhaps even initially unintentional, deceptive scheme amongst his customer base, apparently taking new orders along with hefty deposits, purchasing tubing and supplies for older as-yet undelivered orders with the new-customer money, and hoping everyone, including his friend (a mutual friend of both of ours, as a matter of fact) who was leasing him shop space in his garage, would remain none the wiser (he did not; he got wise). As with most such schemes, Chester's seems to have eventually come apart, as he most likely fell further and further behind in fulfilling his orders. It appears he was at times years behind, failing to deliver to those who had put down $1000, $2000 or more, anything but empty promises of "Soon," proffered only after persistent pestering and almost always via email.
Finally, near as I can figure, by 2006, Chester's operation was likely failing in earnest, possibly due to the recurrent concussive traumatic brain injuries he occasionally complained of which rendered him unfit or unable to work, or possibly because he met a girl who lived in Canada and he chose to refocus his life-goals around being with her instead of making bikes, or possibly because he became fixated on the fact that, as a Canadian, she offered him a way out, beyond the reach of his increasingly disappointed and often angry customers and creditors. Regardless of his motivations, and with little forewarning, he announced mid-2006, on his now defunct Livejournal blog, that he was officially going to stop framebuilding, presumably with a number of orders still unfulfilled and deposits unreturned.
In the end, near as I can figure, at some point prior to 2010, it seems he and his wife/girlfriend had moved to a small town near Toronto, Ontario, Canada. A handful of customers, some of whom had ordered their bikes as far back as 2002, report that a few of their bikes were finally delivered via international shipment through Canada/USA customs in early 2011.
No one knows how much real cash money Chester absconded with, if any. No one really knows how many of his frames went undelivered. Other than Chester himself, no one knows much about the actual whys and wherefores of his apparent inability to honor his commitments to his customers.
All anyone really knows is that, while he was productively making bikes, Chester made some (comparatively) very affordable, very fun-to-ride bikes out of a difficult to conjoin, quite highly sought after, genuinely exotic material.
No one knows how much real cash money Chester absconded with, if any. No one really knows how many of his frames went undelivered. Other than Chester himself, no one knows much about the actual whys and wherefores of his apparent inability to honor his commitments to his customers.
All anyone really knows is that, while he was productively making bikes, Chester made some (comparatively) very affordable, very fun-to-ride bikes out of a difficult to conjoin, quite highly sought after, genuinely exotic material.
And now, a decade or two later...
We also know that, of the bikes that were delivered to customers by Chester between 1999 and 2011, many of the frames eventually failed.
Thus it has gone with mine, a 2003 Matt Chester MuTinyman 29" singlespeed, serial number #whothehellknows 1.
It busted.
I bought my Chester singlespeed some five years ago from the person who was its original owner. In fact, he's another mutual friend of mine and the guy in Salida who was renting Matt Chester shop space in his garage.
Small world, huh.
My friend, the guy who originally arranged with Chester to have the bike built for himself is, to put it mildly (and especially in comparison to myself), something of, shall we say, a man of means. So, once the frame-build was finished, he had the bike shipped down the road a few short miles to where it could be assembled by the good folks at Absolute Bikes in Salida, Colorado, with what, in my world, I can only describe as "quite a bit of (classic 2003-era) bling," silver Chris King hubs and a black King headset, Stans ZTR hoops, Fox F29 80mm fork, Hayes Oro hydraulic front disc brake, black/silver Pauls rear v-brake lever, Avid Black Ops Research rear v-brake, XT M760 175mm cranks, 36t Blackspire ring... it's a sweet now-vintage build and I've done little over the years to alter its stance.
I did replace the Thudbuster post with a lovely Ti unit that I had in my parts bin, and the too-narrow Answer Monkeylite carbon bars and too-short 50mm Salsa stem with a much wider (725mm) sexy blue anno SpankSpoon unit (matches the top caps on the Fox fork), along with a gorgeous 80mm silver Thomson stem. And I also took off the fugly carbon Shimano brake booster and replaced it with a one-of-a-kind brushed tubular steel Vulture Cycles brake booster (handmade for me in Oregon by Wade in the 1990s on IRD Rod Moses' jig, I'll have you know). It looks a hell of a lot better on the Chester than that ol' Shimano horseshoe ever did. Works just as well, too. Possibly better.
After owning the bike for more than a dozen years, my friend listed it quite unexpectely on Facebook one evening several years ago now (at a time when I was still a part of that compromised clusterfuck of a website) for a very fair price, along with a couple other bikes that he said he wasn't riding very often any more. I contacted him as soon as I saw the ad, and gave him every penny he was asking for it without any negotiation. I think we both felt we were getting a good honest deal. That's always nice.
Anyway, after about four years of pretty legit riding by me all over our local shield volcano, the bike's seatpost seemed to get super creaky as I was headed out for a shred one morning. I stopped to apply a tiny bit of lube to the post and noticed, as I was preparing to slicken things up, that there was a tiny crack visible in the weld on at the top-tube/seat-tube junction. On further inspection, I noticed there were also cracks on both the seat-stay welds... and beneath the top-tube/seat-tube joint... and at the head-tube/top-tube... and who knows where else. I made myself stop looking and gingerly rode home, back the way I'd come. I've broken bikes before, but never so catastrophically. There was no question, the frame was cooked. End of story. I was sad to see her go.
She had been a real hoot to ride.
Then, one afternoon not long after that, I flipped the story of my broken titanium Chester past Kyle, the general manager of Absolute Bikes in Flagstaff and, as I would soon come to learn, a skilled fabricator of various alloys of metal looking to try his otherwise experienced hand for the first time at the intricate art of welding titanium.
Deal. I mean, the bike was going to be wall art otherwise, so what was there to lose? Thus, a few hundred dollars in Ti tubes and rods, a number of months of patiently waiting, and voila!
Do I think it's going to break again? Oh, yeah. Based on what I saw, how the frame failed in so many places simultaneously, it seems inevitable. If you look carefully, Kyle also ran a tracer bead down another short crack he found in the downtube near the headtube. And then there's the bottom bracket shell joints, where so many of the stresses of riding are concentrated in one area, those welds are key to a bike's survival. And I'm pretty certain Chester probably didn't spend any more time building-in frame integrity there than he did anywhere else. So yeah, I think it's going to break again. When? Who knows. How? Hopefully slowly and with a lot of warning and not in a way that kills me.
It busted.
I bought my Chester singlespeed some five years ago from the person who was its original owner. In fact, he's another mutual friend of mine and the guy in Salida who was renting Matt Chester shop space in his garage.
Small world, huh.
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| Chester now |
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| Chester then |
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Anyway, after about four years of pretty legit riding by me all over our local shield volcano, the bike's seatpost seemed to get super creaky as I was headed out for a shred one morning. I stopped to apply a tiny bit of lube to the post and noticed, as I was preparing to slicken things up, that there was a tiny crack visible in the weld on at the top-tube/seat-tube junction. On further inspection, I noticed there were also cracks on both the seat-stay welds... and beneath the top-tube/seat-tube joint... and at the head-tube/top-tube... and who knows where else. I made myself stop looking and gingerly rode home, back the way I'd come. I've broken bikes before, but never so catastrophically. There was no question, the frame was cooked. End of story. I was sad to see her go.
She had been a real hoot to ride.
Then, one afternoon not long after that, I flipped the story of my broken titanium Chester past Kyle, the general manager of Absolute Bikes in Flagstaff and, as I would soon come to learn, a skilled fabricator of various alloys of metal looking to try his otherwise experienced hand for the first time at the intricate art of welding titanium.
"I'm set up and ready to work with titanium," he told me after listening sympathetically to my tale of woe. "Haven't actually done it yet. All I need is a guinea pig. You pay for the materials and I'll do the labor for free if you'll let me practice my techinque on your Chester."
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The bitch is back!
She's got a brand new carefully mitered and affixed top-tube 2, and a super sexy collar-gusset at the top of her seat-tube now. And, to my eye, a whole bunch of damn solid looking, albeit raw and unpolished, Ti welds 3 in all the places where she needed them, which, as noted above, was several.
I'm thinking we're gonna stick to mostly XC-style riding from now on.
Won't bother me a bit, because regardless of where I'm riding, or how, it's great that I get to shred my resurrected zombie-Chester singlespeed again!
'Cause she is still a hoot to ride!
Update: 30 August 2024
Due to time constraints, I headed out for a quick close-to-home set of hot-laps around the MEDL Stacked Loops (Apollo, Dipper, Spacewalk, Pluto, Big Bang) on the Chester this morning. Got about a mile from home, about half-way up the Dipper trail when the Chester started making the same sort of terrible metal-on-metal creaking noises that I'd heard the first time the frame broke a few years ago. Stopped riding right then-and-there and headed home. Once safely back in my garage, I donned my readers, busted out the bright shop-light, and found this crack in the down tube (it goes most of the way around):
I'm not surprised this happened. I had long been expecting it to, to be honest. Not gonna even consider another repair at this point. Thanks to Kyle at Absolute Bikes, I'm just gonna be grateful to have had so many extra good years on the bike after the initial repair (note: the new failure had nothing to do with the previous repair work). I'm okay with calling it cooked. Strava says I put 1022.8 miles on in the 7 or 8 years that I owned it. That means the Chester cost me about about $1.75 per mile to operate, mas o menos. No frame of reference as to whether that's a thumbs-up good-deal or thumbs-down terrible-deal. But, for what it's worth, I have no complaints. As I've said before, she was always a hoot to ride!
In accordance with the Chester's end-of-life plan, all of its vital organs were harvested expeditiously. I am pleased to report, at the time of this writing, transplant procedures have extended the life-expectancy and steeze of several other bikes... the wheels and stem went to the Surly Cross-Check, the saddle to the Breezer Lightning, the headset to the Surly Moonlander, and the pedals to the Monē Klunker. The bars, post, fork, cranks, brakes, bottom bracket, and grips are all tucked away in back-stock for the time being, waiting to be put to good use somewhere down the road.
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| This here's the end of the road, Chester. |
Footnotes
1. Chester did not put serial numbers on his bikes.
2. Based on what little I know of frame building, and the way this frame cracked so catastrophically in so many places, seemingly all at once, I've come to suspect that Chester could probably have been a lot more precise about how he cut and mitered his frame tubes prior to assembly.
3. Chester's tube-joinery has always looked a little too smooth to me, like it was finish-filed, akin to what a frame-builder often does to complete a fillet-brazed frame.
References
- https://web.archive.org/web/20040408194853/http://www.mattchester.com:80/maindocs/411.shtml
- https://www.mtbr.com/threads/matt-chester.714775/
- https://www.mtbr.com/threads/infos-on-matt-chester-frame.1057664/
- https://www.bikeforums.net/singlespeed-fixed-gear/194823-matt-chester-no-more.html
- https://dirtscrolls.com/89403-matt-chester-utilitiman
- https://www.retrobike.co.uk/threads/utilitiman-titanium-singlespeed-madness.375133/
- https://www.mtbr.com/threads/where-the-hell-is-my-matt-chester.1026027/
- https://www.twitter.com/mctifab
- https://www.mtbr.com/search/287520/?q="Matt+Chester"&o=relevance
10 comments :
Zombie Bike was in the running for a band name once upon a time.
Great piece!
Thanks for the writeup. I love the ride of my Chesters, but I hate hate hate what he did to others. I've broken 3 of them, and I'm down to my last one. I use it for the road and gravel now with a drop bar and a tall stem. The three that I broke, I rode pretty aggressively as mountain bikes and they were great until I saw their cracks.
Mine cracked near the bottom bracket where the chainstays meet. Had it fixed and it is now mainly for flat bar gravel. Got it new so I felt pretty lucky it only took a year.
Great story and thanks for sharing. Matt was certainly an interesting character in many ways. My original 26" broke at the seat collar. Matt replaced it with a new 29" frame at no cost, although that took several months and it was the timeframe he was not fulfilling orders. I still have that bike and ride it occasionally.
Did anybody ever get their money back from the zine he was going to publish.
No idea, Smilin-buddha, but if I had to venture a guess...
I'm one of the multitude of people stiffed by Matt, though a friend of mine actually paid for and received a frame a couple of years earlier. He was very plausible over email. He may not have intended to become a con artist, but that is what he was in the end
It's called a Ponzi scheme. Named after Charles Ponzi and made famous by Bernie Madoff.
I don't think the cracks had anything to do with mitering tubes or filing welds. He probably didn't use argon gas to purge the tubes while welding. The presence of oxygen contaminates the weld and it doesn't last long before fatigue makes it fail. His cult following has proven to be a joke. Anyone can order a frame like his from an established ti frame builder. I did in 2007. Carl Strong. Ti single speed. Track dropouts. I chose disc brakes and suspension corrected for 100mm fork. Amazing ride. I rode it for the first years with flat bars. Now with wide drop bars and 30mm stem. I call it my Matt Chester Killer.
Do you know what ever happened to him? He was a good writer. At some point, he moved to Canada. He seemed to be spiralling down into a mental health crisis based on his writing at the time. I remember him attempting to survive on a diet of bananas and water, and it made him sick. I never had the means to buy one of his frames, but he seemed like an interesting punk rock guy, so I read his blog. He was an early drop bar mountain bike guy, that's for sure.
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