Dealing With Delays

   As promised last time around, I have included a bunch of completed project photos this week, although the bikes featured are not the ones I had intended. The Olmo painting and assembly went as planned, but when it came time to put together the Ciocc and Colnago, I found that I had compatibility issues with, respectively, braze-on/clamp mounted front derailleurs and Italian/British threaded bottom brackets.

   As I ordered the correct parts, I was a bit frustrated with having to wait out their delivery, but it had been a few weeks since I had devoted any time to the Colnago, and I went to work on the C-Record crankset, which needed some polishing. Because it is made of aluminum, I pretty much gave it the same treatment that I applied previously to the Wilier frameset, using progressively finer grits of sandpaper. I then hit it with the buffing wheel/rubbing compound and finally the Mothers aluminum polish.

   I was a little disappointed when I made the purchase of the crankset that the Campagnolo logos had worn off, but it proved to be an advantage, as I didn’t have to work around them. Maybe not quite "good as new", but the parts are looking pretty great:

   I wouldn’t go as far as saying it drove me crazy, but it did bother me slightly that the wheelset on the Colnago was Chorus, not C-Record, and then during my regular internet bicycle searches I stumbled upon an opportunity to correct the situation. I saw a nice-looking blue Vitus bicycle on eBay that was incorrectly listed as a 979, and because of my recent purchase of the Lotto Team 992, I immediately recognized the mistake.

   I ended up with what turned out to be a fantastic bicycle with a very nice Campagnolo Chorus groupset at a very low price, and think there are a couple of reasons. Besides providing the incorrect model name in the title, which had to adversely affect searches by prospective buyers, the seller also overblew the significance of a scratch, which had actually caused more damage to a large decal he had in the spot than to the frame itself. He also mentioned a “dent” that turned out to just be a tiny nick caused by chain bounce on the driveside chainstay. Seriously, these flaws were nothing!

   Perhaps the biggest scare for anyone considering purchase was the seller's reference to creaking that occurred when standing on the pedals. Knowing there could be many reasons for this happening, I didn't let it bother me, and as it turns out, the problem may have been the inexpensive platform pedals he had installed. I put in my own Look pedals, took a short ride and found absolutely no problems at all!

   The bicycle also had a majorly mismatched wheelset, with a front wheel that had low-quality Shimano Deore hub and silver spokes, while the rear was a Campagnolo Record part with black spokes to (not) go with the rest of the bike's Chorus group. Wait a second - I currently have a Chorus wheelset on the Colnago. Hmmm...

   A few days later I had come up with an affordable C-Record wheelset to swap out, and now both bikes will have a complete groupset!

   The really cool coincidence about purchasing this Vitus bicycle is that, as professional cycling’s Classics season is beginning, this year marks the 25th anniversary of Sean Kelly’s last really big win, at Milan-San Remo – aboard a purple Vitus 992!  

   Other than needing a good cleaning, some new bar tape and replacement of a frayed rear brake cable, the bike was perfectly rideable as-is, though I did move the bars and levers to their proper position. I wanted to apply some vintage decals, and a funny incident occurred as I got so caught up in the correct look of the artwork for the small Vitus tubing decals that I failed to realize that I was looking at 979 (not 992) decals! Mere minutes after placing the order, I was sending my buddies at VeloCals an email to explain my mistake and cancel the purchase.

   Unfortunately VeloCals didn’t have the 992 decals I wanted, so I had to turn to an alternate supplier named “Dizzibird”, which I thought was quite appropriate considering my previous error! The refurbished bicycle:

   There’s a new project I’ll also be toying around with until the parts arrive for the other two bikes. Sitting around was a handful of Cannondale parts leftover from my previous Cipollini Saeco bike builds. I had tried to sell them, but wasn’t offered the right return on what I had paid, so I attempted to find a reasonably-priced/appropriate-era frameset on which to use the parts.

   I found a sharp-looking 2004 R1000 “Optimo” frameset on craigslist that was admittedly a bit of a scratch-and-dent product. These frames were made of a high-quality CAAD5 tubing, that focused a lot of the material on the stress points of the headtube/downtube junctions and bottom bracket areas. To save weight, Cannondale engineered a top tube that was ovoid to deal with the vertical stresses that occur on this part of a frame, but the tube had thinner walls of aluminum. Well, I wouldn’t say the frames were exactly notorious for damage, but they didn’t take contact from the sides very well, and a good number of the bikes of this era that I have seen have a ding or two in the top tube.

   Indeed, this frameset has dent on the underside of the top tube, but the high-quality paint was not affected. Luckily, the busy graphics are also a distraction to the eye, and you really don’t notice the damage without close examination. The frame is otherwise in nice shape, and the lime green fade paint that fades to yellow around the edges is a real attention-getter! The green is actually very close to the shade used by today’s Cannondale pro team.

   I found a very nicely-priced Campagnolo Chorus Carbon groupset and a pair of the company’s Khamsin wheels with which to build up this bicycle. Another strange coincidence occurred when I found that the group included an identical Mavic brakeset to the one I had just purchased, at a hefty price, for my Vitus 992. I was able to resell the set for a similar dollar amount and pick up a Chorus counterpart for less than half that cost. I’m wheeling and dealing where-and-whenever I can!

I'll finish off with the photos of the completed Olmo: