Reynolds 

I think I didn't express it correctly. First, VintageTTfan, it's a personal taste thing, so if you like it it can not be discussed. I know it's an high quality machine made with great craftmanship.You like it, me not so much, that's it. And I appreciate you starting this great thread and the effort you put into it.
VintageTTfan and Lattz: about why it looks dangerous to me, I didn't look at it as a track machine but more as a fixie fashion bike. The "top tube" is way too high, so trying to straddle it in an emergency stop could be painful, to say the least...

Lattz

Hey thanks for the explanation, now it makes sense. As I said I have not any clue about fixed gear bikes as I was 3 when I had one for the last time, so for me it is always interesting to learn why a bike is better/worse than another especially in this thread the bikes are the ones I have the smallest chance to ever own.

Reynolds 

The seatpost looks like the original Giant TCR.

P!N20

Euro Sport were built by Brian Hayes in Australia, who did his fair share of Olympic track frames. That photo was taken in Melbourne, my home town. I'll be sure to hunt down the owner and sentence them to a life behind (TT) bars.

Lattz

Hey, thanks. I guess the situation in Germany is still quite okay compared to other places but i have a feeling that the effect of the eased restrictions will just come into play. Every day you can read about cases like resraurants or schools who generated ca. 100 cases each alone in an instant. Plus peole also think the "beside the mask thing" everything is normal again so they meet in hordes of course without keeping distance or wearing mask beside the supermarkets.. But lets see how it goes on.

Nemosengineer 

: Mike

Lattz

wanted to make sure that these stay close to the herd.

Lattz

The road TT version of Cicli Berlinettas iconic white-blue Columbus air miracle.
Unfortunately the paintjob and saddle dont amaze me as much as the frame.




and the road bike version

Lattz

A nice track frame for those who like flag-themed paintjobs, unfortunately no high-res photos, and the Ms Pain red arrows pointing to the glitches are not so fancy.
I am personally more interested in the keirin brake adapters, would have been nice to know about these back when I let a Takhion frame run, because it was track.

Lattz

Bumped into this DeFranchesci the other day, I like it a lot (no its not as simple as if Italian and red I like it) minus the tape... with so much attention to details on this, they could have searched for a white to red one, this fading cellos are really nice, but this silver/bordeaux is somehow off, but of course even mentioning it feels awkward. Maybe an other thing is that I would have gone either for a black brake rubber or for a white seat, but everything else is top, at least for me.

FlemmingM

I’m not a painter, but I believe you get the wonderful glow in the color, as seen on the Willier, by painting with a semi translucent paint over a chromed frame.

If the base isn’t chrome, I was once told that, if you add a bit of the base color in the first layer of clear coat, the color will get a lot more depth.

Lattz

That is exactly how it is made. This finish is called cromovelato, and was the big thing in the late 70s and through the 80s. Not only one of the most spectacular finishes, but also the most special one, and the manufacturers who use(d) it never forgot to point this out. As opposed to the normal painting process where small glitches can be corrected or covered with filler and base coat and of course the paint itself, the main "feature" of the cromovelato is to expose, how perfectly the frame is made. So the whole frame has to be mirror polished, chromed, then covered with a tinted transparent clearcoat. This is more effort to make. Those who are interested, heres a youtube vid from Battaglin explaning the same.


Its intersting, that Wilier offers the finish for every current model of theirs as well for a "modest" USD1500,- extra over the bike's price, as I think, with modern frames they anyway paint the underlying chrome coating as well (I think of the carbon frames here), therefore it might not be that difficult to make, rather just "pay for the special look" thing - but I might be wrong.

While I like cromovelato frames for their looks, there is one big downside of them. If the lacquer gets damaged, it starts peeling, which does not look that good, and of course 1., repairing is almost impossible 2., full redo...hm... who would like to do that to a special frame? And if you do its no cheapo. It is always a big question, but definitely more difficult compared to painted ones.
Of course not as bad as having base coat exposed or raw or rusty steel, but not nice either:



As for Wilier, the copper color is their signature one from around 1945, hence the name Ramata (female form of ramato, meaning copper plated), and if I am not mistaken a successful model is called Gioiello Ramato, or Copper Jewel (hard to tell if it refers to every Ramato finished ones in the 80s or only a certain model, thanks to people on the net, who are labelling things to the closest one their imagination allows, like every green Bianchi is an X4 and almost every which has a yellow splash as well was ridden by Pantani himself ).
That Wilier pista is definitely breathtaking...

Nemosengineer 

: Mike

Lattz

For me this is one of the magic unicorns.. I'd love to hear from those who were involved in it how these ended up in Soviet hands.
Its also cool with the Takhion handlebars.

Lattz

pure elegance

xiaoman1 

I thought that I would post a progress picture here since this is where my obsession began..I started a thread entitled "Help Me Build My Bertoni Crono" in the CV subforum but want to post a pic here to...sorry for the cross-post.
I am still trying to source parts and decide on whether or not to go more vintage or a bit more modern (Aero).
Decals are off and I have put a few things on the frame.

Polished, detailed and mounted a saddle.

Still trying to source a reasonably-priced front wheel, not a disc!...I like the way it is coming together!
Best, Ben

Lattz

Oooh..... and how good is it that youve thought... so far good. I like that bordeaux Concor. Really classy. As for the front wheels you can check out Mavic.I dont know the availability ob the US market but here in Europe you can still find nos rims as well as really cheap ( EUR 50) complete wheels.

Lattz

Anybody on Earth riding a Gamba Alan lopro...that must be good! Ever since I saw that Gamba made lopro Alans as well besides the regular badge engineering Im looking differently at my damaged silver frame. Too bad I cant just give birth to a set of different lugs which makes the diffeeence otherwise I'd resurrect it immediately.

Lattz

Haha! I went through the pictures staring for minutes at each of them. By now its not a secret, that I like Italian bikes, speacial bikes, red bikes, so if something has these features in an all-in-one package that's even better. I was laughing loud as reading the text. I told myself, whoever built this one at Olmo, must have thought of me.

Lattz

A different kind of crono bike. Absolutely not from the targeted era for this thread, but a beautifully crafted specialty so I thought others might like it as well. So clean, that these photos look CG fake ones. I'm personally not a huge fan of golden things in general, massive amount of gold usually makes me sick. And while I explicitly do not like this shade of gold somehow it comes together well on this bike, but I'm open to comments from others, be it positive or negative. The Heuer stopwatch makes the whole thing both funny (like anybody would ride a batch of gold for records) and serious.

Lattz

a nice Laser-show. Unfortunately not in my cellar.

Lattz

The 7.6 and 6.8 kg weights are eye-popping. My Alan weighs 8.6 and that is alu and was considered worlds lightest....... (I think with a handful of exaggeration)

xiaoman1 

Lattz,
Where do you find these images? While I am not usually a fan of a lot of bling for some reason this works for me.
As Dorthy would say in The Wizard of OZ...."Oh My!!!!!!!!"
Best, Ben

xiaoman1 

That is a very tasty/graceful seat tube along with the triangular bracing of the stays...so very nice!
Ben

Tunnel Vision!

Lattz

Hey Ben,
same here, as I wrote, gold plated bikes are not my thing as well, not only because as VintageTTfan pointed out, they get ugly if not done properly, but in general too much gold is not for me.
But I felt that this one cannot be just simply ignored.
The pics are from CycleEXIF.