Gee, It's (FINALLY) a Gios!

   It’s hard to believe it has been six months since I started this Gios-Torino Super Record project, and in a way, it feels like the process has completely coincided with the start and end of the winter! Well, spring has definitely arrived in the last couple weeks, with a few of those days feeling more like we skipped directly into summer. I’m not really complaining, except that maybe it was a little rough riding in the 90-degree temps without having any time for my body to adjust to the conditions.

   A big part of the delay in polishing off the Gios was out of my control, as acquiring a few of the late ‘70s parts was incredibly difficult, especially if I didn’t want to pay a fortune for them. The most challenging of parts to find was an appropriate bottom bracket. The search was made doubly difficult because at the same time I was attempting to find a similar part to finish my friend Brendan’s Tommasini.

   Just when I finally found a bottom bracket for the Gios, I realized I forgot to find downtube shift levers. If you recall, I had bought the bulk of the Super Record group with the Peugeot, and it had slipped my mind that the PX 10/E had Simplex levers, and I had never purchased a replacement for those parts.

   A couple weeks later, I had a pair of Super Record levers to install, and I was able to roll out the Italian classic for some photos:

   I have finally purchased everything for Brendan’s two projects, and I have been piecing the two bikes together gradually as I await the last couple of parts to arrive in the mail. It’s been a bit awkward in my shop lately, as I’ve been constantly shifting bicycle positions in my rafters as I’ve been working on them, and I fully realized that at this moment I have too many builds going on all at once!

   The current process hasn’t run quite as smoothly as Cinquebicicambio , but it is inching closer to completion anyway. I started with the Vitus 979 from Brendan, which had a base of Shimano 600 parts, and I had intended to complete that group with the 600 crankset from the “donor” Saronni. My new friend Arol intercepted that build with a Mavic parts plan, which is not a problem, except for a further accumulation of parts to sort through and decide which are suitable for future use and which will be sold.

   I actually found a very inexpensive red Vitus 979 frameset recently on eBay, and I am simply going to put the Shimano parts right onto that, keeping in the general line of my original build plan. A quick search on eBay netted a headset and pair of wheels to complete the 600 group, as I had originally hoped the Shimano mix on the Saronni might help fill in the gaps, but found it had a 105 headset and a disappointingly inferior wheelset built from Sun rims and Origin 8 hubs.

   I few weeks ago I received a message from a gentleman named Lenny, who had seen some of my craigslist-ings and was very generous with his comments about my work. Through many incredible stories he shared, I learned Lenny is in his 70s, has led a very interesting life and is a bit of a globe-trotter. He has an incredible collection of bicycles, including a DeRosa that he wants to update with more modern components. I have a Campagnolo Centaur group that I received on-the-cheap, including a nice set of the company’s Nucleon wheels, and this sparked his interest. Through email exchanges, we came up with the idea of a work/parts swap for the Super Record components that are currently on the DeRosa.

   Although he lives outside of Boston, Lenny wasn’t too keen on shipping the bike back and forth. He has preliminary plans of a visit to the Philadelphia area, with the hope that he can drop of the DeRosa in Royersford, and I can take care of the work while he is off exploring.

   On a recent sunny day, I actually got to devote some time to yet another project, my own Pinarello Asolo, which had been purchased already stripped of its paint, but the frame needed some cleanup/prep work before I add color of my own. My second attempt at the pseudo-cromovelato giallo (yellow) will involve a chrome-like finish I used many years ago on the lugs of a Motobécane re-paint job. A base of glossy black will be applied, followed by a coat of Dupli-Color chrome and then the Metalcast yellow tint on top.

   I had been going back and forth in my mind about the Pinarello decals that I want to put on the frame. Although I like the black decals I had applied to the Coppi, I think I am going to go a different route this time around. I’ve seen yellow cromovelato Battaglin and Razesa bikes, as well as the copper Wilier Triestina, all with simple white logos, and I think it looks really classy.

The look I'm hoping to achieve with the Pinarello

   Believe it or not, I have a couple other projects in-the-works, but I have so much on my plate right now, I’m going to hold off on getting into discussing those for a little while.