miamijim

So I buy this mish mashed bike to part out and say to myself, frame and fork $$, cranks $$, brakes $$, Mavic MA40's w/ mix match hubs $$, seat post $75-100 and figure I'll make a quick $250-300 profit for doing nothing.

I try to remove the post and its stuck, I know better than force things so I spray some lube in there and let it sit. A nice firm twist and it moves, success, I just salvaged a $100 seat post!!! So I start working it and I'm like, WTF, the post is twisting but its not moving in the frame?#@%? Well, the pics says it all, press fit with epoxy and pinned. I've never seen or heard of a Campy post like this.

What a disaster this bike has been, the rear Dura Ace hub is toast, like burnt black toast toast, the left crank arm extracting threads are stripped and so on. At least the F&F is good, it a good Cinelli 1R and I can sell the odd ball tooth size 144 bcd rings for good money.

repechage

You can sell the mechanical parts though.

What is interesting is that the stamping at the top of the seatpost is very non standard. I have not seen it before.
Also interesting that the tube left behind was machined... There is an interesting story there. The FRP splint looks like carbon and kevlar...

cyclotoine

is there a limit mark on the lower section? Could this be fashioned after the fact? Have to scanned the catalogs? Weird indeed. I look forward to this thread's conclusion.

ftwelder

Wow, that is amazing. I love this kind of stuff. I have all kinds of potential scenarios running through my mind but the "fake" thing is certainly an option.

Have you fully removed it from the frame?

gaucho777 

I'm confused. Does the bolt protruding out the top act like a quill? If it wasn't done in the factory, it's a pretty nice mod. What would be the purpose of this? What type of bike?

miamijim

The post has been removed from the frame, the cross hatch marks are from clamping the exposed end in a vice and twisting it out of the frame. It was cut off at the bottom so there's no markings and it's wall thickness is much thicker than the NR post I have for comparison. Nothing about this post is right, tomorrow I'll post side pictures next to an early NR post.

Randy, the bolt you see is one of the 2 bolts on top of a '2 bolt' Record seat post.

My money is on either a prototype or a knockoff.

Chombi

That is a strange post. A two piece design that I never saw before. The casting flash on the clamp portion of the post is also something you don't see on most Campy posts. Could it be a prototype that did not reach production that got away from the factory?? Those Campy factory workers must have really big pockets then.....
The name stamped on it does look unusual, but will anyone bother to do such, just to fake a Campy post which will most likely be immediately questioned by many??

cyclotoine

the text itself is odd. and the finish poor.

I looked in the catalogs and searched for photos of campy posts. I can't find another with the unfinished head and block text. Makes me think this was a botched post which a factory work took and cut off and fixed to a new post with some clever machining and use of the insert. Or, it was a prototype. Sell it on ebay for a $1000 BIN as a rare prototype.

Chombi

Maybe the French secretly sold the posts to dealers as some sort of desperate, last gasp espionage move to kill Campy's hold on the market for top line stuff....
"Spydel" probably was the one responsible for it!

RobbieTunes

Beat me to it, Chombi. I knew it was a French seatpost.

ftwelder

It's a special post requested by Gino for smuggling documents.

Velognome 

Using it, you could change saddles without messing with the height or angle, that is if you owned several of these installed on different bikes, correct?

T-Mar

Is there such a thing as a good Cinelli 1R? Well, maybe the newer, tampo stamped versions. I don't trust the ones with the plastic logo insert. I've seen too many of them break.

rootboy 

That's IT, Frank.
Truly weird. I like V-Gnome's theory of a quick change post with saddle attached, but it still doesn't make sense. Customer altered? But who could possibly face that "cut" end of the clamp portion. Done on a lathe, it looks like. Stamping is definitely off but looks more Gran Sport than Record. Really bizarre, Jim. A collector's item.

RobbieTunes

CIA seatpost.

seypat

Looks to me like something to be used in a bike fitting process. With different tops, you could dial in seatpost length, seat, saddle adjustments, etc. a lot easier. Similar to what is used in the golf club business these days.

rhm

Jim, I don't suppose you have a "before" photo of the post? I'm curious how obvious the line was, where the two pieces met.

repechage

My money is on a prototype of some sort, that said, Campagnolo often stamped prototypes as such.
Let's assume this was before the single bolt seatpost design.
The top could be cast or more likely forged, and not dressed after much save the secondary machining.
Miamijim broke it apart if I understand correctly in an attempt to remove it from a frame. So, no "interchangeability" in my view was planned for.
As he also mentions that it appears thicker in the tub section... an attempt to produce a lower cost seat post and experiment with FRP bonding or any bonding for a stressed part?
Much later Campagnolo went to a two part bonded together seat post.
A search of Italian patent applications might provide an answer, I bet those are all paper only though. At least back then.

RobbieTunes

Wouldn't some epoxy and a nice "put back" make it useable again?

Drillium Dude 

Sure - I run nothing but on every bike I own and I've never, ever had one of the inner clamping wedges break. I have few spare wedges "just in case", though, so perhaps I'm not 100% convinced just yet

As for the post, the graduated inner milling is interesting, as is the chamfering. The logo itself appears authentic. I agree about the unfinished look to the head, too - btw, is the head alloy or steel? And do the outside diameters match for both the top and bottom sections? Perhaps somebody took the hard and long road to adapt a seatpost that was the wrong size for their particular application.

From the pics, it seems the bottom section could very well be a garage-job and the top a very, very old original piece; cobbled together, they ended serving their purpose.

What an interesting piece of kit! Besides this strange duck, the only other Campy post I've ever seen that really made me scratch my head was an advertised Gran Sport two-bolt post on Ebay - that post's shaft was solid through and through. I could kick myself for not making a bid on it!

Myself, I don't think I'd be so quick to unload this mystery bit

DD

Pars 

Maybe someone was prescient regarding electronic shifting... a place to stuff the batteries

repechage

That was a training seat post, more mass to make you feel stronger come race day when it was exchanged with a bored out one.

miamijim

More pics....

The posts pictured are the mystery post and a pre-'73 no limit line Record post. Some of the machining marks are similar, I circled one of them in red. Two big differences are the threaded bolt sleeves, the mystery post has much thinner sleeved while the Record post has thicker chrome plated sleeves. The lower rail cradles on the mystery post are aluminum while the Record posts are steel. The 2 adjusting bolts are identicle. The post thickness measure about the same on both.

There are no markings on the lower section of the mystery but it has been cut off, and the Record post has no markings either.

repechage

Aluminum lower cradle parts were later, as are the tapered counterbored cradle barrel nuts.

I think the length is key here. line boring a cylinder that long is a challenge. My best guess now is that this was for one of the lower tier mtb. groups. Mtb's in general used longer seat posts than found on a typical road bike of the period.

TiHabanero

I had a 1983 Raleigh Competition GS with the Gran Sport package on it. The seatpost had the same markings, but did have a minimum insert line. Do not think it was a two piece post. I could be wrong.