A Ephgrave and a Carlton refinished

As usual I haven't been keeping a very good

record of all the frame sets i refinish and

bikes I restore...but here are a couple I  have 

just finished.

First up is a absolutely beautiful Ephgrave No 1.

I have worked on and/restored a LOT of vintage

racing frames and bikes over the years, so I will say that

without doubt this Ephgrave frame set is one of the 

best finished and most beautiful frames I have 

had the pleasure to work on.

Here are some photos of the frame set after 

hand stripping.

You can plainly see the immaculate brazing and 

finishing, you can see a lot of love 

has gone into the building this frame.

I really wanted to pay a personal homage to Les Ephgrave 

when refinishing this frame set, I wanted to give it a paint

job that I thought Les would have been happy to see.

I mixed all the colours myself, and have to say

I am quite pleased with the result, the gold lining gives
it all a subtle finish and tied the colours together nicely.

As you might have noticed the Ephgrave head decal

was a bit to big for the spear point lugs, 

so I cut it down a touch, which was pretty common 
practice on frames with these type of lugs.

 I thought the contrasting brake bridge was a pretty 

nice little touch.

There was not one part of this bike I didn't like, 
it was perfect from one  end to the other, 
unfortunately it was to small for me, 
so it has now gone to a new owner in Japan, 
so although I am a bit sad to see it go,

I am really happy to have had the opportunity to work 
on frame built by one of the great frame builders..

Les Ephgrave.

Carlton Flyer.
Here is a Carlton Flyer that I probably spent
too much time on..but what the hell...

They are a bit under regarded and unloved these Carlton Flyers
so I thought I would show a bit of love to this one.

 

Sometimes you get lucky...

So I have been (very) slowly assembling

the parts for finishing my 1984

Colnago Mexico that had been period

modified into a specialist TT bike.

As I am sure most of you will know panto

parts for Colnago's are not cheap, so I

have been biding my time and picking 

up the odd part here and there for the right

 price...ie cheap.

One of the parts I just picked up was this

Campagnolo seat pin with Colnago logo

pantographed slightly off centre, which I

thought was quite funny.

It turns up looking pretty rough, which

was fine as that was it looked like 

in the photo's. 

As soon as I started disassembling the seat pin, I 

quickly realized that I has also brought a complete 

aftermarket Cobra alloy lightening kit for the 

Campag seat pin.

As I am a total obbsesive for these period aftermarket

lightening parts, you can imagine how pleased I was.

 Full Cobra lightening kit.

 Slightly offset Colnago panto

 Here is the pin after sanding with 600/800 then 1200

wet and dry sandpaper, then finished with a good polish 

 Maybe Italian colours in the groves?

 

 

Soviet Gold..1988 Takhion TT

Now for something a little special....

As anyone who might have read this blog previously

will know already that I am a sucker for specialist 

time trial bikes, especially of the 700c/700c variety. 

So of course one day having one of the very rare 

Soviet era built Takhion road going TT frames has

always been high on my list, but finding one has always

seemed an impossible dream..until this one came along..

  Takhion Special Racing Bicycle - Model BsHA-001

Frame number 344 build date 1988

 The frame came from Lithuania, and it's brother has been 

restored in the USA by Takhion expert and enthusiast Psy

Check out her blog and bikes here

Psy's lovingly restored frame 343 88 brother to 344.

There are a couple of other good resources for Takhion

here and here, but if want to just stay here, this is 

a brief history of Takhion. 

Takhion (Tachyon) (Тахион) was a brand of race bicycle frames 

developed and produced in Kharkov, Ukraine by the 

specialist department of race frame and associated 

race component builders TSKTB (some have it CDTA)

or Central Design Office for Bicycle Construction.

The department was headed by two main personalities

Georgy Panin & Reginald Vorontsov.

Vorontsov in Rossin cap, Rossin was heavily

involved in elite Soviet cycle racing.

The TSKTB department was operating from some

time in the sixties, but really came to prominence when

it was given the task of developing bikes for the Eastern

 Block USSR riders to use in the up and coming 1980 

Moscow Olympic games.

The result was a line of bikes called the 

Moscow 80 (Москва 80) some painted in

the same colour scheme as the then current

TI Raleigh Pro team bikes.

 Apparently these bikes bristled with innovations in weight

savings, from slotted and drilled componentry to specially

built titanium parts.

TSKTB then went on to develop the Takhion line of

race bikes to be used by the elite riders of the USSR.

Takhion is a hypothetical particle that can travel 

faster than the speed of light, and comes from the Greek 

tachy which means rapid.

 Between 1981 and 1992 TSKTB made somewhere

between 400-500 frames in 17 different varieties, although

some of these where one off prototypes.

344 came with non original bars, but original

brake calipers and B/B set.

Caliper is quite an elegant item, the arms are very nicely

formed and svelte, combined with a titanium centre bolt

and all alloy hardware, maybe let down a little by the

slightly clunky quick release lever.

 Steering head with alloy retaining nut.

 Columbus drop out showing frame No and build date.

Some details of the propriety lugs.

Very pretty gear boss.

Can't wait to get this one up and running,

and then try it out on my 25km work commute,

can't think of a better way to get a smile on my face

in the beginning of the day.

Factory photo from a presentation at the 1991

Milan Cycle Show.

Lance Armstrong 1995 Merckx Team Bike

As some of you might know, I have 

been selling quite a lot of my collection over the 

past year or so.

Well the reason for this radical downsizing is quite

simply that I have decided to develop my historic 

collection to a far higher level.

This has called for some hard choices I can tell you.

However I have made a pretty clear set of my own

guides as to what is worth displaying, or even if

not displaying now, then preserving in dry 
storage for either displaying, or if needed restoring 

at a later date.

 So to cut a long story short, the first bike I have acquired

through the painful disposal of some of my collection is this 

Lance Armstrong 1995 Team Motorola/Caloi Eddie Merckx.

Columbus SLX New 
Frame No:

F 9016

  The bike as it arrived from the States yesterday, much

to my relief. The process of getting it here had turned out 

to be quite time consuming and costly.

The person I brought it off, brought it in 1998 from

a cyclist who purchased it from the annual Motorola 

postseason sale in Wisconsin. 

He brought it less wheel set, and changed the bars

and stem to suit himself, well why wouldn't you?

 The frame is in remarkably good condition, I suspect

that  this frame didn't see a lot of action with Lance, as

Columbus MX Leader was also available to the riders 

that year, and I think a titanium frame(?).

Columbus SLX New frame decal.

I know that the team also had 753 frames that year decaled

as Columbus..apparently Merckx was quite fond of 

recommending 753 to pro teams. 

The paint finish on the bike it really quite outstanding, 

far better than I was expecting, even the Caloi decals

have a thin gold key line that you can't really make out in 

the photos, but make the red text 'pop' quite nicely.

 

 Now the next step will be to find and fit the original

components to the bike before I put it on display. 

 The all important top tube decal, obviously printed on a

1990's Gerber Edge Printer.

You can tell this by the slightly translucent finish of the

white on clear decal, screenprinted decals are opaque.  

I know this because I have a Gerber Edge 2 printer that

I have been trying to get going for the past couple of years

so I can make reproductions for certain bikes from this period

with these Gerber printed decals (Mitchell's for instance).

Unfortunately I haven't quite got there yet, but you will

know when I do, because I have at least 5 Mitchell's

stripped and waiting for their Gerber printed decals. 

  Gerbers were also used to make the metal foil 

decals as well.

Gerber printed Clear 'Mitchell' and foil

World Champion strips.

 So even though parting with several of my precious bikes

to purchase Lance's bike was at times quite painful, in

the end I am glad I did. This is a serious historical piece.

Whatever your thoughts around Armstrong and his legacy,

there can be no doubt that he popularized cycle racing

to a level that was beyond anyone's widest dreams. 

He was also a great rider, and pretty funny on his postcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mor7iBP3INw

Here is some great footage of Lance and the boys in action
Tour du Pont 1995

  

When Art Meets Industry...1960's Clem Eagle.

Here is an 1960's Australian made Clem Eagle

that I lost for a while, but through a series of

strange events, have found again.

As you can see this fully hand painted, sign written

and pin striped frame set is a real stunner.

It appears to be the frameset of the original owner 

of Clem eagle Cycles C.'Dick. Eagle.

The frame is made with Nervex Professional lugs, 

and judging by it's weight, I would assume Reynolds 531 DB.

I haven't been able to find out to much on this maker/shop.

here is a short shop history I found on Australian Cycling forums.

Clem Eagle bikes were produced by Arthur Richard (known as Dick) Eagles. Dick grew up with his family at 36 James Street, Lidcombe. There's a nice little snippet here recounting his fall from a bike in a race in 1935. The earliest reference I can find to Clem Eagle bikes is 1940, when Dick was 22, the same year he married. By 1943 he had a bike shop at 305 Chapel Road Bankstown and lived upstairs with his wife Isabel. He remarried in 1949 and was living with his family at 36 James Street from then until at least 1954.

By 1950 he was in partnership with O.S. Stewart at 301 Chapel Road, Bankstown (don't know whether this might be a renumbering of 305). By 1963 he had sole charge of the Bankstown shop and had expanded to 180 Liverpool Road, Enfield. I believe that both Bankstown and Liverpool shops had closed by 1970. Not much I'm afraid, but information is a little thin on the ground.

So here you have it, that strange quirk in Australian culture, that allowed some
of the finest, delicate and most beautiful pin striping and painting in the world
of vintage cycling to exist alongside one of the most macho sports, in one of the
more macho countries in the West...love it.