Bike vs. Bike - 1992 Yeti ARC vs. 2015 Yeti SB6c 12

That vintage Yeti is great! I would still pick the new one as 26" bikes from the 90's suck to ride.

No way that's a 92 however. The Judy didn't launch until 94/95 and team bikes featured Answer A-Tac stems through 1993 and didn't start powder coating Ringle stems and Rock Shox lowers until 1995. Additionally, if this were a team bike from 92, it would have Grafton cranks and brakes (which were utter garbage by the way).

My guess is that this is a 1995, mostly because of the team parts, powder coated stem and forks and fact that while it wasn't popular, the Yeti A.R.C - A.S was in the Yeti catalog through 1995.

The reason I don't think this is a 96 or newer is because in 96, the Rock Shox judy had no cable stop on the brake bridge because V-brakes were on the scene by then. They also did away with bolts on the crown and opted to have pressed in stanchions to save weight.

That Judy looks like the elastomers are totally shot by how compressed the fork looks. You can still buy coil spring kits for these and damping cartridges. Those Judy's were super easy to take apart and tune.

I know all of this because I'm a massive nerd who spend my high school years racing Norba Nationals and obsessing about mountain bikes in the pages of Mountain Bike Action and Mountain Bike.

Is this like a "which bike would I rather hang on a wall" kinda vote?

THE Jeff Stanton??!

Yep... no Judys in 1992... Judy SL and DH were launched in 1995.
In 1992 this bike was probably running a Mag 20

Having almost that exact setup on the ARC AS in the early 90's I can confidently say I will take the SB6c. I am curious on what the effective reach is on both bikes when taking stem length into account.

I'd like to see how Richie's bike compares to a Yeti-6 DH. Could have pretty extreme Geometry setup's on the Yeti-6's by adjusting the the pull shock collar.

No such thing as a Judy in 1992.

maybe it was added later?

This version of the ARC AS was 92-94 I believe (the first production Judy was released in '94), and in the last year also overlapped with the ARC AS/LT that was developed for downhill team. LT = a whopping 3" travel. Some of the parts may have been sourced at a later date to rebuild the bike but it's still an an accurate example of a factory level ride spanning the early 90's.

The SB6 has a 64 degree head angle? How did they lose 1.5 degrees with only a 10mm bump in fork travel over stock? Doesn’t look like a Angleset or anything?

That's what it measured at consistently. I'm fairly certain the rear shock/bushings are stock spec, but the longer travel, different volume tires, imperfectly level floor, imprecise reading with the angle finder, difference in lower headset cup height, variance in axel-crown length, etc all can result in published numbers not always matching up in the real world. Both bikes were measured several times in the same way in the same spot so relative to each other they should be reasonably accurate, but we can't claim the figures are perfect.

Nerd