I prised this away from Legrandfromage a month or 2 back after falling in love with her from first sight!!
Many of you will already be familiar with the frames history however briefly, she was built as a 'one off' custom by Steve Wade back in 1993 for one of his then riding buddies.
Columbus SLX tubing, Cinelli stamped bottom bracket shell and Shimano dropouts. The frame is an early compact, possibly due to the MTB geometries Orange were using at the time?
The frame was finished in black pearl with chrome chain stay, dropouts and forks, with the same decals as the Clockwork from '93 except the subtle D headtube decal.
LGF had put the bike together with a mix of Campy and Shimano, however as this was such a rare beast, it could only be DA 740* series throughout on an 8 speed set up with first gen STi levers.
The groupo was sourced, however hours before meeting Mr Cheese a PM arrived telling me to contact him urgently :shock: :shock: :shock:
Whilst cleaning her up he had noticed a crack in the seat tube running horizintally from the split.....deal off we both thought???
After a few further PM's I took a punt on the whole bike at a good price - worst case scenario a nice piece of wall art to add to the growing collection, however with Mercian cycles on my doorstep I thought there would be a reasonable chance of repair.
So, cash exchanged, bike collected (nice guy is LGF), fully stripped and over to Mercian in Derby for the verdict. Luckily, due to the postion of the crack and the extended seat tube the repair would be simple however would result in loosing the top 1cm of fancy detailing on the tube and having an allen key clamp as a replacement but hey ho what ya gonna do???
As the work was going to be done, I took the oportunity to get a fresh coat of black pearl enamel and some repro decals from Gil. The original chrome was excellent and would be preserved and the Columbus decal had already been carefully removed.
This was all done 5 weeks ago so just waiting for the call to say its ready for collection
In the mean time I have collected all the remaining parts to finsih the build....
NOS Syncros Stem/Post/BB
NOS Flite
NOS 3TTT Bars
DA 7402/7403 grupo
Really excited about this one, with a weeks worth of winter training in Tenerife coming up on 22nd Jan I cant wait to get this built.
More details and build pics to follow...here are a few of the frame before it went to the 'hospital'
Many of you will already be familiar with the frames history however briefly, she was built as a 'one off' custom by Steve Wade back in 1993 for one of his then riding buddies.
Columbus SLX tubing, Cinelli stamped bottom bracket shell and Shimano dropouts. The frame is an early compact, possibly due to the MTB geometries Orange were using at the time?
The frame was finished in black pearl with chrome chain stay, dropouts and forks, with the same decals as the Clockwork from '93 except the subtle D headtube decal.
LGF had put the bike together with a mix of Campy and Shimano, however as this was such a rare beast, it could only be DA 740* series throughout on an 8 speed set up with first gen STi levers.
The groupo was sourced, however hours before meeting Mr Cheese a PM arrived telling me to contact him urgently :shock: :shock: :shock:
Whilst cleaning her up he had noticed a crack in the seat tube running horizintally from the split.....deal off we both thought???
After a few further PM's I took a punt on the whole bike at a good price - worst case scenario a nice piece of wall art to add to the growing collection, however with Mercian cycles on my doorstep I thought there would be a reasonable chance of repair.
So, cash exchanged, bike collected (nice guy is LGF), fully stripped and over to Mercian in Derby for the verdict. Luckily, due to the postion of the crack and the extended seat tube the repair would be simple however would result in loosing the top 1cm of fancy detailing on the tube and having an allen key clamp as a replacement but hey ho what ya gonna do???
As the work was going to be done, I took the oportunity to get a fresh coat of black pearl enamel and some repro decals from Gil. The original chrome was excellent and would be preserved and the Columbus decal had already been carefully removed.
This was all done 5 weeks ago so just waiting for the call to say its ready for collection
In the mean time I have collected all the remaining parts to finsih the build....
NOS Syncros Stem/Post/BB
NOS Flite
NOS 3TTT Bars
DA 7402/7403 grupo
Really excited about this one, with a weeks worth of winter training in Tenerife coming up on 22nd Jan I cant wait to get this built.
More details and build pics to follow...here are a few of the frame before it went to the 'hospital'
