I had been waiting
for a couple of small parts to arrive in order to finish assembly of the
Pinarello Prince. Here are a bunch of photos of the completed project - as always, you can click on the photos to enlarge them. I am
very happy with the results! By the way, it is a size 57 cm frame, perfect for
someone 5’11” to 6’2”. If interested, let me know!
The other Pinarello
has really become a bit of a money pit. As you may recall, it arrived at my
door in a poorly-wrapped lump, and the bicycle turned out to have been just as
poorly described in the eBay listing, with many inaccuracies regarding the bike’s
condition and the identification of parts included. At the time I was most
concerned with the seller’s claim that the Treviso had not been restored, when it
had an obvious bad re-paint and decal job.
I hesitated to take
the bike completely apart and go deep into its inspection, particularly if
customer service was going to instruct me to return the bike in any dispute
with the seller. Faced with a ridiculous shipping charge to return the bike to
Bulgaria, I accepted what I thought was a reasonable partial refund. As it
turns out, the money really hasn’t covered all the costs involved in getting
this bike back on the road.
If you have been
reading regularly, you know about the need to find a replacement fork, since
the one that came with the bike was destroyed in order to remove the rare
engraved Pinarello stem that was rusted to the steering tube. Fortunately the
fork wasn’t a Pinarello original, but unfortunately the correct part will be
more costly (of course)!
After stripping the
frame, I took it over to Peter
Dreesens to have the deteriorated cable guides removed and new ones brazed on.
He was also going to fill a couple of the larger dents I found on the frame.
Peter is an expert
and did a fantastic job! He even took the time to fill a couple other spots he
found and filed/sanded down some sections of metal that had been rusty and/or
pitted. When I arrived to pick it up, he asked whether I had checked the
alignment, and I admitted that with the other problems so far, it hadn’t
crossed my mind.
I’m so glad he is
the person to whom I took this frame, because it appeared the bike had been
struck from the side. When we inserted a rear wheel and looked down the back to
see how the rim lined up with the seat tube, I noticed immediately that the bolt hole for the rear brake wasn’t centered over the rim. Although the wheel was in fairly straight alignment with the rest of the main tubes, there was a noticeable bow to the
left on each of the rear stays. Peter pulled out his “deadly” hook
tool again and went to work finding the correct spots to press the frame back
into shape – you sure can’t do this to a modern carbon fiber version!
The frame is now
ready for repaint, and I’d love to send it out to one of the fantastic
bicycle-specific shops you can find on the ‘net, but they are pretty costly. I
was really happy with the job Bruce did airbrushing the Prince, and I had a
preliminary talk with him about the Treviso. He definitely fits my budget
better, and this is a fairly basic, one color job. I can also save a bit by doing the small fills myself, detailing the engraved areas and cut-outs with white paint – those pro shops charge
additionally per cut-out!
I will also order
the appropriate decals from Velo-Cals and take care of their application. I found out an
early ‘80s Treviso had sticky-back decals that were applied over top of the
clear coat, unlike the more complicated water-slide type I used on the
Motobécane project.
And I thought the Colnago project was long-term!
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