A different bike from the Soviet Union : Bikes. Rants. Adventures.

Edit: Many thanks to my friend Adam for giving me an awesome history lesson on these bikes and clarifying a few things!

I just want to preface this by saying I am definitely not an XB3 expert. Please correct me if any of this information is incorrect! I am still learning.

When I first heard about XB3, it was not really, well, positive.

XB3 Rekord was a fairly low end bike, with questionable parts and construction. Not only was is considered the worst model, but it was also pretty heavy and many of the parts had odd sizes that were hard to find. This is all I thought that XB3 was until I did a little more digging when researching Takhions, and discovered the Sport, Kvant, and Velosuper.

I have since learned a bit more about the types of XB3 bikes available: Above the Rekord prior to 1980 were the XB3 Sprint, which was chromed and made of Columbus or Reynolds tubing, and Meteor, which was made of Nikopol tubing.

Later, there were three other frames: the XB3 Sport Git, Sport Sprint (different from the XB3 Sprint), and the XB3 Kvant. The first two were made of Nikopol tubing, with the XB3 Sport Git being the lowest end model, but still much better than the Rekord, and the XB3 Kvant being the best, and also made from Columbus tubing. After 1990, the name Kvant was changed to Velosuper. Also, I feel like a total idiot here because I thought Kvant was a separate brand, and have even referred to it previously in this blog as such...now I know better!

There was also a Takhion/XB3 Moscow collaboration frame, which honestly deserves its own post.

The awesome thing about the internet is that it's bringing bikes like this out of the woodwork for the world to see. And with that said, I started to notice these frames a bit more. When I saw a photo of a gorgeous red Sport that a friend of mine had, I gained an appreciation for these frames - sadly, that frame was waaaay too big, but I mentioned that I'd love to own one someday.

Amazingly enough, soon after a Sport frame came up in my size...and what can I say? I love Soviet bikes!

This frame is a gorgeous teal - my camera captured it as a light blue. Don't be fooled!

Definitely well loved and with some battle scaring, but no dents, rust, dings, or botched threads. This will be a fun little machine, and amazingly enough I'll be able to fit on it.

So far, finding Sport parts has been a whole lot easier than finding Takhion parts, but it's not without its own challenges! The headset and BB in this photo are both XB3 Sport, and I have a few other bits for this bike in my shop and on the way.