Atstew

I found this decal on my 83 Eddy Merckx.
where does this tubing fall in the line of Columbus heirarchy ?

T-Mar

That's a French Columbus decal, so presumably the tubes are metric diameter. It's also the decal used for the SL and SP road sets. At the time, Record and KL were higher, so it would been 3rd or 4th. SL was the slightly thinner gauge of two, would have been 3rd and used a 27.2mm seat post. Thicker SP was 4th and used a 27.0mm seat post. Had it been a 1984 model, it would have bee knocked down 2 ot 3 rungs by the introduction of SLX, SPX and Air.

Atstew

Wow
thanks for the info. It does have 27.2 seatpost. So third in line. I bought it from the original owners family, who did buy it in France.
thanks for the help. I’ve been trying to find out more info on this bike since I’ve bought it

verktyg 

I have or have had a number of French bikes with Columbus tubing. The tubes are all metric diameter except for the steerers on the ones with British threaded headsets. The marques include: Gitane, Motobecane, Peugeot, Bertin and Mercier. The top Stella models in the 1970's were made of Columbus too.

Columbus French foil sticker from the early 70's - "3 TUBES RENFORCES" indicating that only the 3 main tubes are butted Columbus tubing.



All Columbus French foil sticker.



French foil fork sticker.



Mid 70's French Columbus frame and fork stickers.







Late 1970's mid 1980's French Columbus stickers.



I had Greg Softly in Oz make up some of these for me. He now has them on his website: https://www.cyclomondo.net/

I've never seen Columbus French stickers with SL or SP on them. Also, in 1980 Columbus started using the name Cyclex for the steel alloy used in their SL/SP/PL/PS tubing. Pure marketing bunk! Cyclex is nothing but the bog standard 4130 Cr-Mo alloy steel that Columbus used for years (so did Tange & Ishiwata).

verktyg

bulgie 

Only in weight. No quality differential between Record, KL and SL, just the gauge. I don't remember KL being any more expensive than SL, tho that could just be my bad memory.

The reason so many builders used SL instead of KL was not because SL was cheaper, it's because KL was too thin and weak. It was considered useful only for small riders, track pursuit, and single-ride mountain stage bikes for top pros. (If they kept riding it, it would develop fatigue cracks.) Record was even lighter. Reputedly developed for Merckx's hour record. Tubing to ride for one hour and then retire! OK exaggerating a little, he probably rode it more than an hour, but not very much more. This was not heat-treated steel, only Normalized — which is a kind of heat treating, only we don't call it heat treated. It's stronger than annealed, but not as strong a heat-treated.

Giovanni Battaglin rode a Pinarello reputedly made with KL (according to the decal) to win the Giro in '81. He didn't ride the whole Giro on that bike, only the Tre Cime mountain stage. He only got 3rd on the stage, but made so much time on his GC rivals that he basically won the Giro that day. Beautiful bike. I have pictures of it here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmPZhxw5 Looks like it still has the same bar tape as on that day in '81, probably wasn't ridden much before or after. Fun fact: the bike that Pinarello has in their "museum", which they claim is Battaglin's Tre Cime bike, is a different bike! Either Pinarello is lying, or more likely, no one who was around back then still works there and they just don't realize it's the wrong bike. Several small details are different from the pictures taken during the race, and those details do match the bike you can see in my Flickr. Not my bike sadly; it was on loan to a Seattle bike shop (Il Vecchio) from Pinarello's US distributor Gita. No idea what happened to it after that.

BTW "Acier" is just French for "steel".

Man, I do ramble on a bit don't I? Sorry.

Mark B

verktyg 

1978 Columbus tubing specs:



Mark,

I've never seen a Columbus KL bike, frame or even any KL tubes. A builder friend said he used KL for extra light frames BITD but didn't care for it (Excel and Tange Prestige were just as light but much stronger). The 0.7mm x 0.5mm wall thickness main tubes weren't that radically light but the 0.5mm seat and chain stays must have made for a scary flexible rear triangle ??? I doubt that Columbus ever produced much RECORD tubing ???

In 1980 Columbus increased the wall thickness of the SL chain stays from 0.7mm to 0.8mm. Probably because of too many cracked/broken chain stays on SL frames ???

... to ramble on a bit more:

I bought a boxed set of Ishiwata 015 Alpha tubing when it first came out in 1976. I was going to build an uber light TT frame for a small woman. The wall thicknesses were printed on the box and I always remember the top tube was 0.6mm x 0.3mm x 0.6mm... We were amazed that we could squeeze the 0.3mm tubing between our fingers! The other thing, I could never figure out why that super light tube set had 1mm thick straight gauge fork blades. I was looking online for the original wall thickness specs but over the years there have been a number of different published dimensions for Ishiwata 015 tubing.

About the same time I picked up a set of Columbus PL - Pista Leggera tubes with 0.6mm main tubes. Except for the 0.8mm head tube the forks and stays were same as Columbus SL.

Never got around to building either of those frames. In the 1990's Peter Johnson (RIP) and Ed Litton became the recipients of all the frame building supplies that I'd been carting around for years. I built my last frame in 1992.



"Just one more thing" ... To add to Mark's comment about KL light gauge tubing, a lot of production frames were made of Columbus SP or Reynolds 531 "Sprint" tubes up into the early 1980's. Several reasons, both of those tube sets had 1.0mm x 0.7mm main tubes plus the rest of the tubing wall thicknesses were close. The thicker tubes allowed for the use of lower skilled employees because there was less concern with overheating. Also the thicker tubing could handle rougher handling before painting.

Many team bikes used those heavier gauges throughout the 70's. They could withstand crashes better plus the hurried handling of the support teams after stages and events. Another thing, many of those bike were used for several years and handed down to lower level riders after repainting and new components.

In 1977 we acquired one of Lucien Van Imp's 1976 Tour de France Gitane team bikes. We were sorely disappointed to find that it was just pretty much a very used, beat up, bog standard bike with worn out Campy components!

verktyg

T-Mar

There's a simple reason for that. Columbus didn't introduce decals with the SL and SP designation until 1987. By that time most French manufacturers had switched to imperial dimaeter tubing and Columbus was no longer offering metric diameter tubing.

T-Mar

Arguably, the most common KL frame is the Pinarello Prestige. They became fairly popular after Battaglin used one to help win the Giro d'Italia. Several have turned up on the forum. The most popular Record tubed bicycle is undoubtedly the Colnago Mexico.


KL was not that different from Reynolds 531SL or Tange Pro. Given that heat treating does not improve the stiffness, a KL frame should less scary than a Reynolds 753 frame.

Bianchigirll 

Any pics of the bike?

Atstew

I’m not allowed to post pics yet
but I uploaded several on my acct. feel free to post from there.
thanks for all the help

machinist42

OP's Album.

JohnDThompson 

They weren't "higher" quality than SL or SP; just thinner guage. They're all the same steel alloy, all seamless tubes, and except for "Record," all butted tube sets. The different gauges were just intended for different purposes. The really thin sets (KL and Record) were intended for special purposes; e.g. time trials and record attempts where frame durability wasn't a primary concern.

T-Mar

.

You've taken my answer out of context. The OP was asking about the positon of his tubeset in the Columbus hierachy. My answer was only related to the hierachy, not the quality. Besides, quality is an absolute, not a quantitative attribute. There's no such thing as higher or lower quality.