Grove Gathering: Grove Innovations Assault Team Bike
Photos and words by Jarrod Bunk
This assault was one of the first 10 assaults to roll out of production in Grove’s Pennsylvania factory and was ridden as a team race bike in the early 90s. I can’t imagine if I were in attendance back then, my mind would’ve melted as a ten-year-old. Just look at it! Fade, check, splatter, check, crackle, WHAT? This Grove has one of the wildest paint jobs I’ve seen on a bike. Sadly I’m told that this paint can’t be replicated because the chemicals don’t exist any longer.
Not only did Grove make frames, forks, stems, and handlebars, but perhaps the coolest of all of the Grove parts is the Hotrod cranks. At the time square taper was everywhere, but Bill Grove and his team looked to military applications and came up with an asymmetrical polygon, very similar looking to the interface that E13 uses in their cranks today some 25 years later. They thought if tanks used this design it should be strong enough for a bicycle application. These two-piece cranks used a row of four bearings (two per side) and some seals to keep the weather at bay. Aside from the cranks, this build features some pretty standard parts for a grove of the time, including the Hammerhead bar/stem, and some Shimano XT parts.
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