Bikes old and new...

I'll start this post off with some modern bikes I've worked on this week, then timewarp back to my old Holloway Road garage for some blurry scans of bikes I worked on in 2001-2002, and follow those up with one of my old bikes from the mid 80s.

First, this cool carbon Guru Geneo with Campagnolo Record gear that I had in to locate and eliminate a mystery creak...



Next, I built up this gorgeous Litespeed Siena with Ultegra SL, AlphaQ forks and stem, Chris King headset and Topolino wheels. Very cool.



Then comes this Thorn. While not the usual sort of ride I blog, I really liked this purpose-built steel touring rig. My friend Patricio from CAN ordered this custom Rohloff equipped machine for extended epic tours - it's already ridden up l'Alpe d'Huez and other legendary climbs of the Tour de France, and is set for many future adventures.

It was in for me to true the rear wheel, as well as to carefully remove a redundant pump peg from the rear of the seat tube and to remove some equally redundant extra material from the rear of the carrier. Some judicious hacking, cutting and filing, followed by some British Racing Green touching up and it was all go...very cool bike.







Now for the bikes from the garage...apologies for the quality of the pictures, but they are scans of photos taken on my old dunger camera. I thought the bikes were noteworthy though - they were certainly all great fun to build and ride!

Colnago C40



Colnago CT1



DeRosa Merak



Pegoretti Marcelo



Pinarello Opera



Wholly Bagel's rider Nic Johnson's lovely titanium Wylder



Test riding the Mighty Whopper Chopper!



Now this picture dates from 1986. It's of a very cool Colnago time trial bike I used to own that was taken from me under very dubious circumstances. It was custom built by Ernesto Colnago himself (#17) and was equipped with heavily machined and pantographed Campagnolo Super Record gear, with Modolo Kronos carbon gear levers that snapped every second ride or so. Ambrosio 28/32 rims with bladed spokes, Clement tubs, Assos saddle, the first Look pedals in Wellington and 3ttt bars and pantographed stem. I chewed through the aluminium Regina America Superleggera cogs in what seemed to be a couple of rides! Note the backwards mounted brake calipers too...

As it was my only bike at the time I rode it hard and often as a road bike, as well as doing the odd local TT. Despite it's steep angles and tight wheelbase, it handled very well, although I do remember it being a bit squirrelly at about 80kph as I rode down the Hutt side of the Rimutakas on one hard-fought training ride!



To finish off these two lengthy posts is this very cool picture I just got of my great mate John Randal and his beautiful daughter Kaitlyn on the start line of this years Karapoti Classic. They raced the 20km Challenge together - John on his Specialized Epic, and Katy on her trailer bike behind. They stomped around and broke the tandem record!



Well that's all for now. I have a couple of neat projects on the go, so should be blogging again in the next few days. Thanks for reading, Oli