Tomac 204 Magnum

The Tomac 204 Magnum is an interesting frame. It was designed/developed/made? by Doug Bradbury who did the original Manitou forks and frames. His bikes and early forks where always heavy on CNC machining and you can see DNA from those times in the linkage parts of the frame. The suspension was licensed from Lawwill and the frame was a specific DH frame and supposedly rode like a tank (with soft suspension).

The Lawwill rear suspension seems to live on forever. Originally used on the Gary Fisher full suspension frame, then Lawwill released his own frames, it then went to Yeti, then Schwinn/Yeti then to Tomac and then it went to Rotec and now maybe some obscure garage company is planning to take over the DH world with a new version of the infamous Lawwill rear suspension.

To make a long story short, the interesting details in all this is that essentially the suspension works the same way as the original Gary Fisher prototype worked back in 1991. Back then it was called the ultimate suspension frame, so why hide it now?!

You would think these old school Tomac frames are collectors items these days but they are not, as with the original Intense M1 SL, you can pick up a used Tomac 204 Magnum quite cheap.