Cool shop bike: Curtis's Bruce Gordon

     I was thinking yesterday about which bike to profile next and this one jumped out at me. It has been parked this winter in the garage way up high out of view to most, but I know its there. This is another one of Curtis's riders. This bike is a late 70's Bruce Gordon.
      It is a more traditional road racing frame with pretty tight geometry. Curtis has it set up with a little more versatility in mind. 28mm tires gobble up the rough city streets and the trails in the Wissahickon. Campagnolo  Nuovo Record rear derailleur has been converted with Rally cage plates and Bullseye jockey pulleys to allow for wider range freewheels. The rest of the components are standard fare Nuovo Record grouppo. Blackburn rear rack mounted with Blackburn custom eyelets (allows you to mount a rack on Campagnolo drop outs without using P-clamps). This gives the bike some carrying capacity. Criterium style bars add to the fast look of the bike. Note the front light bracket on the front brake caliper, when doing night rides a front wheel built with a Schmidt generator hub is used. E6 front light occupies the bracket providing superior illumination of the road ahead. SPD pedals with platforms provide option for both clipped in riding, or more casual around towning.
      The frame construction is excellent, nicely thinned and contoured lugs with attractive fast back style seat cluster. If you look at Bruce's current work and then look at this bike, you can see the stylistic connections. The rear brake is mounted on the inside of the brake bridge. The paint and decals have nice patina. Like I said, this bike is a rider! Really attractive fork crown with subtle stylistic treatments.
     When Curtis and I have gone on rides in the past and he is on this bike, His smile is bit bigger than usual, I guess he enjoys it! (which of course is the point of riding a bicycle!)

Cool shop bike #3: Colnago with Gilco tubing

This is one of the Curtis's personal bikes. Late 80's / early 90's Colnago with Gilco tubing. Pretty unique machine, The Gilco design was produced by Columbus and is Hexagonal. We also have the Cinelli EXA bars that match the tubing, super rare. Maybe one day we will install them? The bike is mostly C-record components, the coolest being the rare sheriff star road hubs. Usually you see them as the track version, they were prone to cracking where the flanges met the hub barrels, I wonder if this was a problem with the road version? The down tube index shifters Campagnolo produced were prone to problems as well, but these work well. The large Biodinamica 900ml water bottle is a bit of a rarity as well. This era was the aero dynamic trend, so a lot of the components reflect that. Campagnolo Delta brakes were also over designed and did not work very well, but are super cool looking and equally rare. Nice Mavic 280 rims are very light. The lugs are the early "master" type. The seat cluster is almost a fast back treatment, keeping with the aero style. The BB shell is webbed, again for the aero style. Straight blade fork. This bike is meant for speed, not comfort. Curtis states that this bike is indeed very fast and responsive and looks forward to putting some more miles on it!

Cool shop bike: 1958 Frejus track bike

I am going to start doing a series of profiles on some of the bikes in the shop's collection.

This is a 1958 Frejus track bike purchased at a swap meet a few years back. Some of the cool features include the first generation Campagnolo cranks with pedal backs. The pedal spindles are also shorter so they don't poke the pedal back caps out, quite rare. Inch pitch drive train is nice and immediately responsive to bursts of effort. Too bad it is not a block chain. Campagnolo "no record" pista hubs indicate age as well. Spokes are tied and soldered to stiffen the wheels, extra long spoke nipples help to stiffen the wheel as well. Early generation Campagnolo pista head set with super rare lock nut and steel "Campagnolo" stamped spacer. Steel Cinelli pista stem with old logo and nice Ambrosio alloy track bars. Cyclo saddle support and older Brooks swallow saddle. The chrome plating is "peppered" giving the frame a very nice patina.

   This bike was owned by Aurelio "Ernie" Gallegos who was coached by Avrey Burndage. The bike was raced in some Pan Am games and in the 1969 National championships in California in which Ernie won second place and received a water bottle as prize. Ernie says the race was on a grass track that was so muddy he was only able to ride about 50 feet before dismounting the bike and carrying it to 2nd place. Ernie also states that it originally had 40 hole wood rear rim because he used to pull spokes through the 36 hole drilled ones. The decals and head badge were removed by Ernie's coach because of team conflict invilving Schwinn I believe, But I am not sure about the details.