Making Room

   I have been able to clear some space on the shelves and in the rafters by selling off a bunch of miscellaneous parts, as well as the Bianchi Trofeo bicycle that I purchased about a month ago. I made a $100 profit on the bike - not bad, considering I bought it for just few hundred bucks, and that it was a machine on which had to do very little work. I only hope the Colnago makes the same percentage of profit!
   Today's entry will include very little new information, since my other projects are in limbo - the Pinarello Prince is out for painting, and the Treviso is soaking in rust solvent in order to make an attempt at freeing the handlebar stem. This week I am simply providing a photo summary of the Nuovo Mexico project, which I listed on eBay Sunday night.

   
   I am really happy with the results, though I'm a bit sad to have to let it go. I know that I have more than enough horses in my stable already, so I can only hope that someone who loves Colnago bicycles as much as I do will give it a good home!

Bulgarian Boondoggle

   I don’t think I will be buying any more bicycles from Bulgaria in the near future! After agreeing to a partial refund on the Pinarello Treviso, my not-so-trusty seller disappeared for a few days. When he finally replied to my inquiry regarding his schedule for sending the money, he gave some scattered story about national holidays and then said he would get right on it.

   When at last the funds appeared back in my Paypal account, I started to take some preliminary steps towards putting this bike back in proper condition. I had hesitated to take anything apart until I was sure of the refund and that the bike was staying in my possession. Unfortunately that didn't give me an opportunity to find out if anything else was wrong with the bike – I was sort of stuck!

   Everything was going smoothly until I attempted to take off the drive side cup of the bottom bracket. I’m used to that being a tough job, but the cup moved initially and became difficult from that point on – not a good sign. Sure enough, after wrestling with the removal tool for about five minutes to get the part all the way off, I found damage to the threading. The cup will have to be replaced.

   By the way, with the bottom bracket removed, I found out that the bike is indeed a Treviso when I poked my finger up into the seat tube and found the surface to be “smooth”. It had a nice rusty coating but no rifling to indicate it was anything but Columbus SL tubing appropriate for the Treviso.

   A much more difficult problem proved to be removal of the handlebar stem, because it turned out to be fused with rust to the fork’s steering tube. After searching the web for some possible solutions, many of which did not seem very friendly to the frame, I am starting with trying a multiple-day soak with WD40. I will then try to tap the stem down with a hammer (with a wooden block to protect it, of course) to break free of the rust. I have to be careful not to drive the horizontal part of the stem down into the headset.

   Strange-but-true possible future steps might be trying lime juice, vinegar or cola (Carrick the Coke fan says to use Pepsi). I suppose after that, it would definitely be professional help, again.

   I found an inexpensive, beat up Treviso frame and parts available on craigslist, which I am considering because it has the correct fork and a metal headtube badge, which is missing from mine. If my current stem/fork problem can be solved, I could switch out the parts then resell the rest. However, if the problem cannot be solved, I could use this frame as a replacement, but we’ll see. 

   Another alternative would be just to call this project quits and be done with it. There is plenty of value in the parts of this bicycle, and even if I treated the frame as a throwaway and just resold the components, I would still be able to reclaim nearly all of the money I had originally spent. The wheelset alone, which includes excellent Nisi tubular rims and Campagnolo Super Record hubs, would fetch about 1/3 of the total cost of the Treviso!

   Hoping for the best, I envision setting this bike up to look like a real classic. I would have preferred to keep the original paint, but since this definitely is not, I’m planning on doing a custom paint job. This will involve the process of stripping the existing colors, but I’m certainly not in any kind of rush. Any type of repair work on the dents, and maybe the rusted cable guides on the top tube, will require paint removal anyway.

   Of course my design depends on the condition of the chrome that is under the paint, but I would like to expose as much of the “shiny bits” as possible. The rest of the frame would be in a dark green, with the Pinarello engraved logos filled in white. I would purchase some appropriate Treviso decals from Velocals, a company that I used for the Motobécane repaint project a couple of years ago.

   I was thinking of a brown leather saddle, either a Selle San Marco Rolls, the brand I used on the Colnago, or perhaps their Regal saddle, that has a fantastic old-school look with copper rivets on the back.

   Some leather handlebar tape would look really classy as well, but not the real stuff, which is too expensive. Fizik and Deda make a synthetic product that costs about a third as much and provides a lot more cushioning for the hands than the actual leather wrap.

   Because I have no experience with mounting/gluing tubular tires, and I really wanted it done correctly, I purchased some vintage-look Continental tires with tan sidewalls and took everything over to my friends at Bikesport. I also used that opportunity to get some advice about the small dents in the frame, and they recommended someone they use occasionally for frame repair.

   This was about a week ago, before I attempted to take apart the headset. If I can separate the stem from the fork, I will contact the repair fella and see what can be done to fix the frame.

   I listed the Bianchi on eBay last weekend and already have some bids, and a nice profit. I am awaiting some vintage Colnago handlebar plugs, and that will be the final touch on that project as well. I planned on spacing out the listings of these bicycles a bit anyway, so that I’m not hauling multiple bikes out for packing and shipping all at once.

   Since I have all the parts ready to go, I am hoping that when the Pinarello Prince comes back from the airbrush work, I will be able to put that machine together quickly. My basement rafters are bit crowded right now with eight bicycles hanging down there – three of our own and five waiting to be sold!

Treviso Trauma

   Before I get back into the Treviso saga, I’ll let you know that I am ever so close to completing the Colnago build-up. Last week I finally found a Campagnolo Super Record seat post at a reasonable price. I polished it a bit before installing it and the Selle San Marco Rolls saddle I’ve had sitting on a shelf for what seems like an eternity.

   My progress picture above now includes those parts and the front brake calipers. I also assembled the complete drive train, including the chain and cable hookups to the downtube shift levers.  All I need are those darn brake lever hoods; I said to Sue, “Well, you can ride it, but I’d probably stick to going up hills since you can’t stop!”

   I was also able to scrape the entire failed paint job off of the Pinarello Prince and return the frame close to the condition in which it had started. It took a good deal of work with a dull X-Acto blade and fine sandpaper to smooth everything back out. I also used an old kitchen scrub pad to remove the over-sprayed areas. I was very glad that the Pinarello factory used a durable clear coat!

   The airbrush artist I met seemed very capable and showed me several samples of his work, including some NHL-quality goalie masks. Because he seemed sympathetic to my plight and expressed a real grasp of what I wanted to do, I feel confident the painting will turn out better this time around.

    Although I couldn’t be sure how many of the nicks in the Treviso’s paint were there before this +30-year-old bike was (very poorly) shipped, I was more concerned about the spokes bent around the crankset and the rear derailleur that was a bit twisted out of alignment. The seller had described the bike as in very, very good condition, but it was really far from that state, other than having been carefully cleaned. I noticed immediately a small dent in the top tube near the head tube and later found another on the underside. Both tubular tires were deformed and on the edge of dry rot.

   The listing had also stated that this bike was original, not restored, but upon closer examination, I had my doubts. The paint was a dull, flat yellow and rather thick around the lugs – not at all the quality one would expect from a factory finish. There was no clear coat on the frame, and the decals were the die-cut vinyl variety found on more modern bicycles. Looking back at the photos included with the listing, I laughed at how the paint looked so much better in the eBay photos and how each shot was strategically taken to avoid certain areas of the frame. I was pretty sure that this was a repaint job, and a bad one at that!

   Now that I was discovering inaccuracies in the description, I started to do a little research on this bicycle. I was able to find some old Pinarello catalogs that were scanned and posted online, and the closest I could find, based on having fairly similar components, was the 1982 Treviso. Unfortunately I couldn’t be sure, as it became obvious that many parts were not original, such as the more modern Campagnolo Record headset. I also noted that the fork, which had a sloping crown instead of the standard flat version with a Pinarello logo stamp, was probably a replacement as well.

   Opinions from folks who know much more than I do about Pinarellos led me to believe that the bike may not even be a Treviso. The seller may have mistakenly read the stamp beneath the bottom bracket and assumed “Pinarello Treviso” was the name of the manufacturer and model of the bicycle. However, Treviso is the town where Pinarello builds its bicycles - every one of their frames has this stamp!

   I have received some conflicting information on some details, probably because some bikes had custom features, but it seems the Treviso usually had only the right (drive) side chain stay in chrome to protect it from chain slap, and this bicycle has chrome on both chain and seat stays. By the way, the chrome was another clue that this was a repaint due to the position of the masking area, which is different from any Treviso examples I’ve seen online.

   I finally received some definitive information from a company called Gita, which during the ‘80s was pretty much the exclusive importer of Italian racing frames in the United States. A rep named Tim told me that this is most likely a Treviso because it does not have the internal cable routing on the top tube like the Prestige and Montello models. He also confirmed that the fork wasn’t original and said the stays had unpolished chrome under the paint.

   Finally Tim pointed out that Trevisos were made with Columbus SL tubing, which has a smooth internal surface, as opposed to the rifled surface of SLX tubing used for Montellos. He suggested that when the bottom bracket is disassembled I could poke a finger up through the down tube to confirm the tubing type.

   Strangely (maybe not) the seller ignored my inquiry about whether he is the original owner and how he knows what model the bicycle is. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt and think that maybe he purchased it from someone else who was dishonest, but avoiding my questions seemed suspicious. He then gave me a story about having some other buyer (not that I’d want him to deceive someone else!) and offered a refund.

   Yeah, that would be great idea if he didn’t live in Bulgaria. Shipping large packages to Europe is MAJORLY expensive! I checked online for prices on a standard bicycle 54 x 30 x 8-inch box at 27 pounds and was unable to find anything less expensive than DHL at $941. That’s much more than I paid for the bicycle itself!

   A couple more email exchanges to relay shipping estimates and explain what I would have paid for the bicycle had I known its true condition, and the seller agreed that a $250 partial refund sounded like a better option. It has been a few days without the funds appearing in my account, so I’m holding my breath. 

   I have been thinking about what I will eventually do with this bike, and I’ll share my thoughts soon.