Specialized produced around 1,500 S-Works Epic Ultimate flagships in the early 1990s. The prized machines featured TIG-welded titanium lugs made by Merlin Metalworks and carbon fiber tubes that were bonded in by hand at Specialized’s headquarters in Morgan Hill, CaliforniaJames Huang/Future Publishing
The Specialized S-Works Epic Ultimate was a remarkably ambitious project for such a mainstream manufacturer and they’re still coveted by collectors todayJames Huang/Future Publishing
If you look closely, you can see how the lugs are externally machined to give the ends an elegant taperJames Huang/Future Publishing
Such bonded titanium-and-carbon fiber construction would seem antiquated today, but it was cutting-edge stuff two decades agoJames Huang/Future Publishing
Check out the impossibly tiny contact area between the seatstays and seat tubeJames Huang/Future Publishing
Such radical bends would have been nearly impossible to execute in titanium but it was no problem for molded carbon fiberJames Huang/Future Publishing
S-Works continue to be Specialized’s no-holds-barred race machinesJames Huang/Future Publishing
While most other stems in its day were made of aluminum or steel, Specialized was making these stems from cast titanium. They were light and pretty but also frighteningly flexyJames Huang/Future Publishing
These custom titanium handlebars would seem outrageously narrow by modern standards. Since the bar ends were directly welded on to the handlebar, there’s a split center section to alloy components to be installedJames Huang/Future Publishing
The exotic-for-its-time build included lightweight foam grips, Grip Shift X-Ray shifters, and Altek CNC-machined brake leversJames Huang/Future Publishing
Altek produced these brake levers at the height of the CNC machining craze. Check out the lightening holes in the lever blade and barrel adjuster locknut. Hidden from view is the lever’s trademark ‘shark fin’ that maintained a constant-length lever arm for the cableJames Huang/Future Publishing
While it’s always important to keep stem faceplate bolts tight, it was even more so for this setup. The custom titanium handlebar is split in the middle and is held together solely by the stem clamp and aluminum shimJames Huang/Future Publishing
The Specialized S-Works Futureshock FSX fork was a joint collaboration with RockShox. Externally, it was a masterpiece of CNC-machined and forged aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber. Inside, however, it was essentially a previous-generation Mag 21James Huang/Future Publishing
The one-off machined brace was made by then-Avid head Wayne Lumpkin. It was a gift to then-S-Works division head Mark Norris for speccing Avid’s Tri-Align cantilevers, which essentially launched the company into stardomJames Huang/Future Publishing
Despite its limited travel, the Specialized S-Works Futureshock FSX was highly adjustable for its time. The air preload was adjustable with a low-pressure pump and special needle inserted through a rubber valve, damping was tuned via the external adjuster knobs or oil viscosity, and even spring rate could be tuned by raising or lowering the oil height insideJames Huang/Future Publishing
This particular fork uses an especially lightweight steerer tube that was supposedly spliced from a RockShox Paris-Roubaix forkJames Huang/Future Publishing