Italian Excitement...and Disappointment

   There is a tendency for the good and bad in life to balance out, so I was not too surprised when my luck turned foul after two very good deals for Italian racing bicycles fell into my hands. I had been holding off on making any purchases, as sales had been rather slow for the past year, but a fairly recent three-way transaction made some room in my rafters and in my budget.
   I few months ago I had featured on this blog some photos of a 1989 Pinarello Montello in “Spumoni” colors. I’m always looking around for great bicycles at reasonable prices, and a local seller had that bicycle listed on eBay. I had sent him a note about a possible cash deal, saving us both some money (eBay’s PA sales tax for me, seller fees for him) with an in-person pickup instead. The bike required just a bit of polish and some new handlebar tape, before being added to my For Sale page.
   This was the company’s top-of-the-line racer from that era, and usually buyers from the States equipped these frames with more affordable components from Shimano or SunTour. However, this owner obviously had some disposable income and set up this Pinarello with excellent Campagnolo 7-speed Syncro gruppo and Cinelli bars/stem.

   A second Italian classic came to me in the form of a 1988 Colnago Super, again indirectly through eBay, with seller this time reaching out to me after I had noted an unreasonably high shipping price shown in his listing. We arranged instead a purchase through a Paypal invoice, again saving us both a nice chunk of cash in the process!

Excuse the weird photo, not mine

   The Super had the fishnet paint scheme that was common with several brands of that era, and I always liked it best in blue or green, as it resembled fish scales. This bike came equipped with a quality Shimano 600 Tricolor group, but you know me and Italian components – I’ll be swapping in one of the Campagnolo 8-speed groups I have stored on my shelf.

   …and then came the bad. First, when trying to arrange a ride with my brother, it came to light that the 2000 Pinarello Prince I had built for him about nine years ago had developed a fracture on the aluminum drive-side chainstay. Now, we were planning on an off-road ride, so at least our plans weren’t interrupted, but it became clear a replacement would have to be found for him eventually, as he wasn’t too confident about riding this bike again, whether I could arrange some type of repair or not.
   My brother didn’t realize how quickly I jump on such issues, and I managed to find a very nice, mid-2000s Colnago “Chic”. This was another eBay transaction converted to in-person exchange with a really friendly guy who lived in northeast Philadelphia, which yielded a quality aluminum machine with dependable Campagnolo Centaur components and a nice set of Easton wheels.

   It needed a bit of a tune-up and cleaning/repacking the headset with grease, but otherwise it was ready-to-go, and my brother was very excited, especially with the prospect of owning his first Campagnolo-equipped bicycle!

   The Prince curse unfortunately continued as some annoying creaking developed in my own Pinarello, and despite my best efforts, I could not come up with a solution. I headed over to my pals at Bikesport for a second opinion, and a couple days later was informed that the aluminum bottom bracket sleeve was separating from the carbon and that a crack was also present near the seatpost collar.
   I love this bike, but I had just put in over $400 for a repair to the headtube last autumn. I didn’t really want to sink a similar amount of money into mending this bike, just to have more issues creep up, so I’m afraid my Prince is going to become a wall-hanging in the “Cycle Tech Museum”.

   When considering something to take its place among the rideable bikes in my collection, I thought about some of my all-time favorite pros, and Fabian Cancellara came to mind. He won tons of races on Trek and Specialized bicycles, but I ruled those mainstream brands out, even though I’ve always liked the thin, curvy “Zertz insert” seat stays on the Roubaix bikes, circa 2008-2015.
   What I came up with is the bike on which the Swiss legend won a surprise victory at Milano-San Remo in 2008, a carbon Cervélo Soloist. These bikes were the grandfathers to the modern aero-road bikes, with drag-reducing tube shapes.

 
   The original owner had selected the upgraded version of the bike, with a 3T carbon fork and cockpit. The SRAM Force components weren’t CSC-team spec, but I’ll probably leave those be, since they are high-quality products. I will be replacing the Mavic Aksium wheels with appropriate Zipp 30s, although I will have the aluminum brake track version, as I didn’t really appreciate the way the braking surfaces delaminated on the carbon wheels I had previously.