Unfortunately, the weather also turned my basement back into an icebox! By setting up a space heater, I can make the room comfortable enough to do some cleaning and assembly, but unfortunately my top-priority projects involve some painting, and that just can’t be done in these conditions.
I’m beginning to absolutely hate the indoor trainer, and not much can be done about that, but I think my friend Brendan arrived just in time, giving me alternate “work” looking for parts online. Unfortunately I ended up with a bunch of bikes around my shop walls, as the rafters are already crammed with finished bicycles, partially completed machines and about a half-dozen wheelsets!
I always enjoy Brendan's visits, discussing pro cycling (past and present) and bike builds, in this case three new ones! For those of you counting at home, these are projects number 5, 6 and 7 that have come my way through him, although one is actually a frame I’ve purchased from him for future assembly.
We are big fans of Vitus bicycles, and I have built quite a few of them over the years, including a couple for each of us, one that was shipped to Brendan’s brother in Ireland and yet another sent to a buyer in South Korea! During a visit to Brendan’s apartment in Philadelphia last spring, I was surprised to find he actually had one more Vitus among his collection, a silver 979 with blue decals and similarly colored cable housing that set off the machine nicely.
Because the aluminum 979s were not painted
but came in anodized colors we were talking about adding anodized aluminum
parts, like blue derailleur pulley wheels to the silver bike to give it some
“pop”. I also came up with some matching blue bar tape to take the look a bit
further, but Brendan wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do with that bike.
Turns out the bike is coming my way, though
he wants to strip most of the parts for future use, particularly the Campagnolo
crankset, brakes and levers for a Bottecchia frameset he dropped off for a
single-speed conversion. This frame is identical to a purple and neon yellow
bike I built a little over a year ago (see it here),
which replicated the machines used by Greg Lemond’s ADR team in 1989, the year
of his famous 8-second Tour de France victory over Laurent Fignon.
Single-speed is a bit of new territory for
me, but there is plenty of information on the internet. Because this bicycle will not
be a fixed-gear conversion, other than taking a ring off of the crankset and slipping
a single cog onto the freewheel threads, there isn’t a whole lot of change to
be made to the drive. I’ll provide more specific details as the bike is put
together, but this project is lower in priority.
The main bike of importance is the Tommasini
Diamante “Colorado”, with which I have already become well-acquainted over the
past few months! This was the frame that had a post jammed into the seat tube,
which, after several failed attempt to remove the part, required the post to be cut off.
Brendan has come up with a seatpost of a small
enough diameter to fit inside the material left behind, but unfortunately it may be
too small, as our quick test-fit determined during his visit Sunday. I’m going
to see if I can safely shim it in place, but in the meantime, the search has
begun for a Campagnolo C-Record group to put an appropriate amount of flash to
the bicycle!
Brendan was hoping to outfit the bike with
Ergo brake/shift levers, but unfortunately, as I found out with my Coppi build,
the geometry of the early Campagnolo rear derailleurs won’t allow for smooth
index shifting. We toyed with the idea of simply swapping in a more modern
Record rear derailleur, but then decided to go the full retro-route with
down-tube friction shifters on a 7-speed system so that we could include the
beautiful C-Record counterpart:
Before the weather completely went down the
tubes, I was able to finish up the Peugeot PX 10/E, which is now featured on my
For Sale page. I’ll sign off with some photos of the French machine:
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