fignon's handlebars

[bigfatron]

dear all,
you may have seen my old fignon super u replica atop mt ventoux in an old robtm poll.
that bike was written off by an old lady in a vauxhall corsa, along with my face and teeth, but i now have new loves, including a 653 castorama team frame in the super u/castorama livery.
i know all the bits i need, time pedals, c record delta groupset including cables, simplex shifters, wolber profil 20 rims, turbo saddle and itm black stems in silly long 135mm lengths, and i have them all.
but not the handlebars, i've never known what i should be looking for. except for the fact that the drops are square, vertically parallel and deeeeeeep.
the handlebars i am using are sr road champion, with their super deep drop, but the drops flare out from the ramps. and they aren't anodised black (until i get to a local engineering firm that is!).
does anyone know what bars m. fignon actually used in the 1989 tdf?
can i attach a picture of my baby? i'll try.....perhaps i have, i'm not so sure.
richie

 

[bigfatron]

ha, replying to my own post.....
i didn't mention a couple of things and just thought i'd add an update.
my handlebars look at a wrong angle, but that's just the angle i've taken the picture from. i was concerned that i'd set up all wrong, but can assure you that, in accordance with the rules, i have checked the parallel to the ground state of the drops with a spirit level.
the wheels are 36 spoke currently shod with mavic gp4 rims, red label, in a cobbled classics stylie. tubs are winter-weight vittoria rally 21mm.
summer wheels are 28 spoke with wolber profil 20mm (i'm looking for spares if anyone has any for sale?)
freewheel is a suntour winner pro 7 speed ultra spacing, 12/24.
the stem is for 25.8mm bars, the sr road champions are 25.4mm - the shim is, classily, cut from a stella can. a la lemond's tt bars in 1989, but he chose coke can.
the last thing i would mention is the frame geometry. it's difficult to see from the photo, but the seat tube is very slack against the head tube angle, indicating a team frame as public sale bikes were parallel angles i understand. it makes a very long reach, especially with the stem at 135mm and the reach of the bars. comfy though.
i should check the frame number too, not got round to that as yet.
richie

 

[Matt_wood55]

Hello mate

Sorry, can't help with the bars, just wanted to say what a great bike you have. Is the frame actually Raleigh made, or is it one of the team frames made by a French builder and badged up? I have just bought something similar

Cheers
Matt

 

[Old Ned]

Are they not Cinelli 66? I'll have to look at some photos and see.

As for who built it - have a read of this.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=155286

Nothing is ever as straightforward as it might seem.

 

[Penfold6290]

I love your bike, I am in the process of building my own so will hopefully get some piccies up very soon. One comment on your choice of wheel equipment though - I believe Super U and latterly Castorama used Wolber TX rims with Michelin Hi Lite wired on tyres rather than tubs.

Regarding handlebars I have seen photos showing black anodised bars (1989 TdF pics) and shiny bright silver bars (1989 Giro) so you will have a number of choices. Either way I have read that ITM were the supplier.

I am also a fan of your tricolour bar tape, what brand of tape is it and is it one roll or three, if so how do you manage the transition between the colours?

Cheers, Martin

 

[bigfatron]

gosh, a flood of replies for a post of mine!

Hi Matt,
Thank you for your nice comments. I'm not sure who made the frame, I'll have a look at the frame number later today (she's in the boot of my car and I'll be riding at lunchtime if the rain stops) and will post it later.
I was always told that all of the team frames for Systeme U, Super U and Castorama were made by Francis Quillon at Cyfac.
I have also heard that he built for Cyrille Guimard's Renault, perhaps he was at Meral at the time?
Anyhow, it seems that Fignon liked what he made and chose, largely, to ride his frames.
Have you bought on ebay or privately?

Thanks Old Ned, it's always good to hear stories from the past.
The driver must have taken a dislike to Fignon to describe his hair as a pigtail rather than ponytail!
I have seen Cinelli stems, and assumed that the bars were Cinelli, on Fignon's frames, but they never look like the drop is as deep as the pictures from 1989.
A mystery to me, if you hear or see anything more it would be good to hear from you.

Thanks Martin, that's very kind, I'm glad you like her (why are my bikes always female?).
I too have heard that clinchers were in use, and that Super U rode on 23mm tyres in 1989 as Michelin had started researching rolling resistance and had found that there was no aerodynamic disadvantage in the wider tyre at high speed, and they were actually better at lower speeds.
Not that pros ever actually do go slowly! However, this all matches with the recent research that has led to Tony Martin riding TTs on clinchers as they have less resistance.
All that said, I can't imagine a pro like Fignon, steeped in the sport, riding anything other than a tub.
As an aside, if you are going for clinchers, Nigel Scott at Campyoldy had some old Michelin tyres that would be perfect for you.
I had seen the silver Giro d'Italia bars, and I have some ITM bars, anodised black, but they seem the wrong shape. The ramps are too steep, the drop seems too shallow, the reach isn't far enough. Maybe I just haven't found the right model?
The tricolour tape is Benotto, and is three different rolls. Rather than use heat or electrical tape to fix the tape in place, I just wrap it tight and let friction hold it in place. After a while it gets a little loose, then I re-wrap.
Your problem with getting Benotto tape is that there's not much white available, and when you do find it it's not cheap. I got lucky and found a chap in the US who I bought 24 rolls from a couple of years ago.
Ciclolinea, Moore Large or any other plastic tape would do the trick.
It's nice that a few of us are building Fignon replicas, but bad at the same time as we'll all be chasing the same old parts on ebay!!

I'll do some more pictures and add these to my gallery - should i enter for ROBTM?!

In the meantime, here's me on Mt Ventoux a couple of years ago, the bike has since been written off in a crash. These bars are ITM with a Raleigh badge and a black anodised centre section, but they are so badly bent out of shape in the crash they have been binned -

 

[Penfold6290]

Great picture, I plan to take mine to the Alps next year so look forward to having pics taken on the Galibier and Alpe d'Huez amongst others. If you look at the link below (taken from Fiks' post in Mags and Catalogues) the grainy picture does tend to back me up that LF was riding Michelin Hi Lites in the 1989 TdF.

http://s120.beta.photobucket.com/user/f ... 2.jpg.html

I have a new set of 700x23C Hi Lite Comp (not Super Comp HD sadly) on my Sunday best wheels which look so perfect for the period. I intend to lose some cash with Nigel Scott in a week or two to finish my build, the frame should be back with me next week (I feel like a child at Christmas). I guess when it comes to bars you need to keep your eye on Ebay to see if anything matches the shape you want, I have checked Velobase but it is sadly lacking in detail on ITM bars. It might be worth looking at Pedal Pedlar too as they have all sorts of shapes and sizes of retro bars

http://www.pedalpedlar.co.uk/collections/handlebars

I have some Cateye plastic 'shiny tape' coming from Ebay (it's the closest thing I could find to Benotto, there is plenty of red and blue Benotto tape available so I may experiment, some have said that the tricolour was only used on Bastille Day but looking at various stages of the 1989 TdF on Youtube it was used on other stages, not just July 14th.

definitely enter RBoTM, just let us know which month as there will no doubt be a number of very nice Super U replicas vying for attention! Glad to hear you survived the crash even if the bike didn't fair so well.

Martin

 

[bigfatron]

better than all entering robtm in the same month, we should put together a super u peloton - the ultimate in niche retrobike rides!

 

[Penfold6290]

A great idea...I am riding mine in the Wiggle Jurassic Beast sportive in May, I wonder if I'll see any like it or whether it will be a tidal wave of carbon and alloy?

 

[bigfatron]

are you riding the full 100 miles?
i'm wondering if i can persuade my wife that i should ride it?
on ridiculously low gears and virtually no training!

as with all sportives you will be one of the very few, if not the only one, on a steel bike.
the upside of this is that if the photographers are riders themselves they are likely to take many, many pictures of you - i've regularly been told i'm on the best bike they've seen all day!
richie