Grove to Bilenky

Grove Innovations was a small frame builder based out of State College Pa
during the 80's and 90's. Bill was a designer/fabricator that, in my opinion,
built the finest steel frames of the era. At that time, I had to choose
between a Grove and a FAT, the Grove won by a landslide. Known for their
immaculate fabrication, wild paint, and personable customer service, Bill led
his company to cult status, spanning across the Globe. The Assault is the
classic east coast technical trail bike, fast, agile, and climbs like it's
on fire.
- Rody Walter, Groovy Cycles

So after about 20 years of trail riding, commuting, sitting in the shed, etc I decided that it was time to give the ol’ Grove a makeover, cleaning, updating. Andrew and I took it all apart, inspected and bagged all the parts.

The old steel frame was in pretty good condition, but there were a couple of places where the paint had been scraped off and it was starting to rust. So in addition to replacing some of the old parts, I also wanted to see if I could do a little touch up on the paint.

Well it turns out the rear spread is 130mm and the new standard is 135mm. So if I want to be able to (easily) put newer gear onto it, then I need to do something about the rear end.
It turns out that there is a bike maker in Philly who almost always wins some award at the National Handmade Bicycle Show every year. In 2011, it was Best Lugged Frame.


The shop is in a very “interesting” neighborhood at the end of a dead end street, across from a junk yard, butting the railroad tracks. Even if you know where you’re going you would never think much of the place. The junk yard across the street serves as the site for their annual cyclo-cross race.

So I went down to see Bilenky’s and have him take a look at the frame and see what he thought. Turns out that doing the spread isn’t too difficult, so that was good. Of course he knew Bill Grove, the guy who originally built the frame back in the late 80’s.

My other concern was what to do about the paint. I really didn’t want to lose the paint job as the black with white splatter is such a classic, a real “sign of the times.” The splatter effect was sort of a signature for the Groves, though the colors varied and there were lots of other wild options as well. But since I couldn’t replace any of the decals, it just felt wrong to wipe it down to bare metal and loose all of that authentic paint/decal/history.







Check out the matching bottle cage, handlebars and crank arms on this 1990 Grove with a "foliage" pattern and color scheme.



a little of my Black with White Splatter...


So anyway, it was great to check out the shop. I think that was my first visit to a place where they actually build bicycles. It was full of frames in various states of construction and togetherness. It was also full of very old and very large machinery that looked like it weighed about 20 tons and was probably about 80 or 100 years old.


One of Bilenky’s other big things is retrofitting bikes with S&S couplers. These couplers enable you to take the frame apart (and put it back together) so that it will be smaller and easier to manage for traveling. Amazing stuff. This is in addition to the single, tandems, half-recumbent tandems, cargo bikes, track bikes, mountain bikes and other stuff that he builds. Check out the gallery.




I’ll try to get some pix of the shop when I go down there to pick up the frame later in the week.



And I stopped by Conshy on the way home and was able to get in a good workout on the trail.

It was a good day.