Originally Posted by
northbend
Haven't visited the shop in years.
I bought a Coicc San Cristobal frame set from Estelle at R+E after my first paycheck from Boeing in 1979.
More visits after successive paydays before I had all the components needed to build up the bike.
My first real nice race bike.
In 1981 I traded with a co-worker (aptly named Tony LaTour) - my Coicc for his Bruce Gordon.
I still have the Bruce Gordon and it wears a few of the components bought for the Coicc at R+E.
Team R+E had a rider who was insanely muscular, he was a body-builder before he got into bike racing. Despite hauling all that excess weight (the muscles that
don't make the pedals go 'round), he quickly ascended to Cat 2 where he was always a threat in a flat crit. He bought a Ciöcc in Col. SL, and in hardly any time he'd managed to break it, fatigue crack in the DT near the HT. The distributor replaced it under warranty, and he broke the second one too, same place, also after not many miles. I may be remembering the story wrong but I
think he got and broke a 3rd frame too (don't quote me on that, maybe it was only two), but then the distributor paid him his money back and told him to go ride someone else's frames, he was bad for business! Erickson made him a custom with tubing appropriate for his weight and strength, and it didn't break.
Sad to see those lovely Ciöcc frames broken. I wonder if they replaced the downtubes, but more likely they got trashed. Remember those uber-thin lug points? They were filed down to a long thin point, and that makes it hard to melt out the cracked tube without damaging the lug, which is super weak when it's red-hot. Later Ciöcc models went to a more normal-looking lug shape.
Best pic I could find on the web of the San Cristobal lug shape:
From an excellent
Flickr album here, check it out.
Mark B