Wildasincycles

I recently picked up an Olympia Borghi, just trying to figure out what I have. It appears someone removed decals, and spray painted with gloss black. They didn’t do a bad job, honestly, aside from destroying originality. Full lugged steel construction. 27





” wheels, Campy Record high flange hubs laced to Super Champion rims. Campy components, except Galli calipers and levers. 2 brake cable guides on the top tube are off center to the non drive side. Top of the seat stays are filet brazed to the seat tube and not the lug. 27.0 seat post, cable guides on top of the bottom bracket. I will try to post photos via mobile, wish me luck!

Wildasincycles

I may post in valuation to see if I can find any info there, fingers crossed

merziac

Pretty cool, is the stem branded that you can see, SP, Campy DO's?

Drillium Dude 

Olympia is Italy's second-oldest bicycle company. I had one for a time, tentatively identified either as Piuma or more likely a Competezione.

According to this thread Help Identifying an Olympia Borghi the head badge is indicative of late 60s/early 70s bikes.

If those are short Campy 1010B dropouts they suggest later 70s to early 80s production. To be perfectly honest, I wonder if the badge came from another bike and was simply put onto this one - note the lack of rivets holding it to the head tube. Interesting that there are no engravings or windows to be seen anywhere; if you look for Olympias on the Web you'll see what appear to be the firm's quality examples are presented with engravings and lug windows.

Also, I couldn't find a single example of an Olympia with the same style shot-in stay attachment brazed directly to the seat tube. While the frame looks like a quality piece, I wonder if it's truly an Olympia.

Could we see pics of the underside of the BB shell, fork crown, rear brake bridge, and detail shots of the dropouts front and rear? The details are hard to make out on a black bike

DD

Wildasincycles

I’ve included some pics, hard to make out, but def Campy dropouts front and rear. The serial number under the bottom bracket starts with what looks like a backwards “K” followed by 2436073. The headbadge appears to have been removed and epoxied back on. There are holes in the headtube that match the holes in the headbadge for rivets. I can’t find a manufacturer on the stem, but it has 3 flutes, top and both sides, and stamped “Made in Italy”

unworthy1

Interesting! Not sure if its a genuine Olympia but looks like a quality frame, somebody who knows their serial-number system could confirm.
The stem looks like possibly a Cinelli with "milling"; mixed bag of Italian brand components...would be nice to see additional pix of all the frame details that are so hard to make out in black: stay caps/seat cluster, top of BB shell, headlugs from the other angles...that brake bridge seems very short, quite tight for a frame with nutted brakes and over-BB shell cable routing. Are you sure the 27.0 seatpost is correct size (no pinched slot)? Is there 'rifling" in the butt of the steerer?

Where is the C&V guy who was an Olympia expert from years back, was his handle something like "aix-aix"?

MauriceMoss

Drillium Dude is right - you're looking at an Olympia badge attached to a non-Olympia frame.

The features of the frame, including the left-of-center top tube cable guides, stay end treatment, shot-in stays brazed to the seat tube as well as the reverse "K" and the serial number, are all consistent with a Jim Redcay build.

So, not an Olympia but a frame from a highly regarded American builder.

Here are some pics:

Wildasincycles

Wow, amazing info, and MauriceMoss for the win! I will do some more digging on the builder, thank you so much for all of your help! I don’t know why someone would rebadge a lesser known frame with another lesser known badge. I will see if I can whip up some proper decals.

repechage

Prob has English threading too.
curious the change in identity

always the scary thought to hide a stolen bike

John E

That was my first thought when someone mentioned an American builder. I guess a few might have used Italian BB diameter and threading, but to what earthly benefit?

We think alike in that regard, as well.

unworthy1

@MauriceMoss nails another one...again! Now that I see this, of course that big "K" on the BB shell rings a bell, but...too late the sound.

Drillium Dude 

Nice job on the ID, @MauriceMoss - the man, the myth, the legend

Personal opinion: rather have a Redcay than an Olympia - no offense to Olympia, of course. But an American custom?

Since the head badge has now been removed, save it for the display case. I like the idea the the frame may see reproduced Redcay decals to bring it back to its former glory.

Nice score, OP!

DD

rhm

Well, it's hard to say. I can tell you that when I bought my Trek 720 frame new in 1983 I was pleased that it already had headset and BB installed. Didn't occur to me to ask why. Well, a few years later I went to change that BB and found it was Italian threaded. Did it come from the factory that way, or had the bike shop somehow botched the BB threading so badly that they tapped it out to a larger size? Dunno. Lacking any explanation, it's an anomaly, and if this Redcay turns out to have an Italian BB, it won't be a unique anomaly.

merziac

Speaking of Italian BB's, early on in my tenure here I bought a very cool, grail for me frame.

It had a VO cobble futz BB gacked in it and while I'm no expert and can't stand that sort of thing, I have restored several BB's with my own fabricated chasers, a right angle scribe/pick, copious amounts of elbow grease and patience.

I knew all that going in, it had all been fully disclosed so I was waiting to get my hands on it and see if I could remedy anything without making it worse.

Got the VO out and it looked like a not quite big enough cup had been tried too many times I think, It wasn't that bad but it looked bad.

It was Italian so off to the co-op for some cups to make the chasers, chasers made, right angle pick used to scribe the threads clean, anti seize and the chaser and back in business, all good, period.

I may have misunderstood but it seemed that the VO had been employed after a torch and brass had been deemed necessary as the only other fix.

merziac

That stem is a big deal, it is a Cinelli, most milled stems are regardless. Here's a link to another.

https://www.velosaloon.com/products/...-the-1960s-70s

They have the flutes that are tapered at the end transition, not just a plunge cut, very rare detail from what I know.

Maybe @Drillium Dude will weigh in.

Or @scarlson?

Drillium Dude 

Regarding the flutes? Nope. Milling is outside my paygrade.

DD

Doug Fattic 

Jim Redcay at one time in the mid 70's was located in Lambertville, NJ. This town is located right across the Delaware River from New Hope, PA. New Hope is a touristy art center. I believe Jim got his start with Bill Boston (also from NJ). Jim had a connection to Tom Kellogg who retired not long ago. Too bad he did because he would have been the perfect one to repaint it back to original. In the mid 80's Recay was the technical editor of Bicycling magazine.

I think the black paint and old head badge were put on to disguise the fact that it was stolen. This has happened to frames/bikes I have made.

JohnDThompson 

I'm not aware of any Trek frames that left the factory with an Italian thread bottom bracket shell. Which version of the shell is it, Cinelli with top of the shell cable guides, or Signicast, with under the shell, cast-in cable guides? Cinelli shells could be sourced with either Italian, English, or French thread, but AFAIK, Trek only got the English thread version. If it's a Signicast shell, those were never made with anything other than English thread. If you have an Italian thread Signicast shell, that was done after it left the factory.

FWIW, my wife's American-made TS Isaac frame (purchased used) has an Italian thread Cinelli shell. My own TS Isaac frame has an English thread shell. When I asked Tim why he used an Italian thread shell in that frame, he just shrugged and said, "why not?"

repechage

Way back when frame parts were imported in small numbers, one used what one could get.

I built a frame with an Italian shell, brought in to the USA from a shop in Italy by a customer on vacation. He had an Italian thread Campagnolo tool kit.

rhm

Mine has the Cinelli shell, with Campagnolo cable guides brazed on top of the BB shell.

I think you and I, or maybe it was @unterhausen and I, have been over this anomaly before. I'm not expecting to ever know exactly why this was done. It's not a big deal, but it is an oddity.


I suppose, if BB shells came from Cinelli already threaded, then it's possible an Italian threaded one was included by mistake, but would it have fit in the jig the same way? I'd have thought someone would have noticed. Eh, whatever.

scarlson 

It looks like it was done on a vertical mill. There are two ways I can think to do it, without using CNC. With CNC (3-axis in this case), of course, it's easy to make a bunch once you figure out your toolpaths and things. But you'd probably ruin one or two figuring stuff out!

The first non-CNC way is to make a specially shaped milling cutter. I can't see the exact profile of the groove, but it's possible a specially shaped milling cutter could do it, based on what I'm seeing from here. Like a ball end mill but maybe more cone shaped? Making a cutter isn't as hard as you might imagine, especially since they were only milling aluminum. You get a piece of tool steel and mill it and heat/quench to harden it, then sharpen it and there you have it. Just plunge it in and do the cut and then you're done. And it makes sense if you're planning on milling a lot of stems. It would make the process super quick to do. You could really run them off.
The second is to use a pantograph milling machine. These often had a Z-axis control so you could do profiles in 3 dimensions - even though a lot of pantographing we see on bike parts is just at one depth. Then, it doesn't matter what shape the cutter is, as long as it's a smaller radius than the smallest radius seen on the inside of that flute. Easy. You set up your machine with a hand-carved or hand-milled pattern for the flute, and then you follow it with the pantograph, carefully increasing the depth with each pass. It's also possible it could be "roughed-out" on a standard vertical mill with a ball end mill and then finished on the pantograph machine.

Now I kind of want to do that to the 1A on my Vitus

unworthy1

not my area or expertise, either, but with router bits there is a common profile bit that's called 'round-nose' also a wider version one called 'core box'. I know this is "wood or other soft materials" tech and shop tool and nobody uses a router for AL but if there's an end-mill tool with the same profile it would cut exactly what you see in this Cinelli stem.
I had no idea such modified stems were that rare and high-priced.
So if this is a once-stolen bike it could be a clue for the original owner...but quite a long-shot.

scarlson 

The core-box and round-nose router bits are the same as what machinists call ball end mills. They come in a variety of sizes.

That said, the profile of the flutes in this stem appears to be more conical in shape, with straight sides rather than concave ones. So, not cut by anything with a convex profile.

Closest I can think of is a chamfering end mill, but those lack the rounded bottom that this flute appears to have. This suggests a specially shaped cutter. Maybe such a cutter is commercially available. There is a whole world of tooling out there, and common US tooling (with which I am familiar) is likely different to what's readily available in Europe. And like I said, cutters are relatively easy to make in any profile you like, if you have a lathe and a mill already.

merziac

I'm just gonna spitball a bit more here and say this might be "factory" but maybe not done by Cinelli, possibly outsourced, these exhibit a level of quality that is hard to come by IMO from what little I know.