Once again, I have been swept up in a wave of repairs and tune-ups! Fortunately, they have all been fairly simple in nature, and, coinciding with a delivery of some much-needed parts, I have been able to wrap up a few projects, all beautiful Italian machines.
Before a recent move, my pal Andy had been dropping off some of his collection for me to perform some deep-down tune-up work. Although technically I wouldn't consider these "builds", they required just as much (and sometimes more) attention than some of my custom projects.
Andy has a couple of very nice Bianchi bicycles in different colors, but to me, only those in celeste are true classics. This one is (I believe) a 1990 Mondiale, which I completely disassembled for cleaning. The hubs, bottom bracket and headset were packed with new grease before everything was put back together, with new cables and housings, to make this pretty much like a new bicycle.
Collecting the necessary parts to complete his Olmo San Remo wasn't difficult, as much as it just required a lot of patience. Options for purchase were out there; it was just a matter of finding parts at decent price or in good condition - then it was a matter of waiting for some overseas packages!
Wanting to make at least a little progress with my own selected projects, I had been setting aside a little time here and there for collecting parts and assembling some of the bicycles that that have been hanging in the rafters. A prospective customer gave me the push to finish something, and the Ciocc "Retro" was the furthest along and therefore the most logical candidate.
I had already been piecing in a Campagnolo Centaur group from my shelf, and I had a set of nice Mavic wheels with Continental tires ready to go. I only had to set up the cockpit and seatpost/saddle, and it was all ready for cables.
I actually have the Cinelli Unica close to completion as well, but I didn't want to stretch the time between blog updates any further - plus, I didn't want this entry to completely overwhelm its readers with photos! I also have a vintage Nishiki touring bicycle refurb job that a recent customer dropped during a bike sale. It has been another one of those hanging-on-type projects, in this case because my friends at VeloCals have been so busy during the virus situation with customer requests.
I guess I'm not the only one who has taken this lockdown time to work on bicycles!
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