Originally Posted by
brokenbus
Hello from Australia. I have picked up a Marinoni Special with Columbus SPX tubing and a Shimano 600 group set that I have dated around 1988-89. I am striping it down to clean it up and service everything. It has not been looked after well and needs some attention. With the internal brake cable in the top tube, it appears that the outer cable only goes into the top tube approx 1/2 inch rather than going right through and coming out the other end. There is some sort of guide tube though as when I push an inner through it comes out in the other end where it suppose to. Is this normal for a Marinoni frame or is there just a bit of outer cable stuck in there that is acting as a guide? Hope this makes sense. I am also wondering what the correct type of wheels would be for this bike. I am looking for something with 600 hubs but not sure what rims. Any ideas?
Cheers
Nicko
Welcome to the forums. The 1st character of the serial number is the year of manufacture. So, provided you can narrow down the decade by frame features, it's easy to determine the year of a Marinoni.
Regarding the internal rear brake routing on Marinoni, what you describe is standard practice. Only about 1cm of cable housing fits into the ports.
A large percentage of Marinoni were custom ordered, so it's possible to find them with a wide variety of OEM groups. Having said that, during this era a Marinoni SLX frame was most likely to be equipped with Campagnolo C-Record or Shimano New Dura-Ace. Marinoni was a Campagnolo distributor, so during this period the factory assembled bicycles typically came with Campagnolo rims, though there was also some Nisi. If the bicycle came through an Australian importer, it's quite possible that they only ordered bare framesets and were assembled by the importer using components which they distributed.