Resources for Racing Bike Restorers

Key Resources for Racing Bike Restorers

Most importantly - know someone who was there, in the racing scene at the time of your bike - even if you weren't (thanks Dave!).


Here's a few websites that saved me over the various projects I have done (and made me the happy child that Bianchi promised in their 1950 catalog):

1.Campy only: the website to end all websites for Campy snobs like me. Full timelines of components (critical to getting a build right), opinionated writing about the joys of pasta over rice.

2. eBay USA - a thriving vintage bike trading community exists on eBay, although the bidding is global and rare items can go stratospheric. Don't be afraid of freight, just think it through and talk to the seller before you win - that said, getting a whole bike out of the USA is a feckin' nightmare unless you know someone like Trevor Rice, wh might find you a nice consolidation deal. I had an amazing experience with the vendor of the gold rims on my Bianchi - they eventually came from Paris to NZ twice after a Post Office screwup that occurred not 40 metres from my desk.

Be warned - you can spend hundreds of hours trawling, watching and bidding on parts. Best to have a group of you interested or undertaking restoration projects at the same time, so when the inevitable pressure comes on the load is shared.

3. TradeMe NZ - populated by some savvy people who know the value of second hand treasure, but an occasional source of gold. I had to rat a whole Ciocc to get the levers (factory drilled Super Record) for the Bianchi.

4. Bulgier.net - one of those rare little goldmines of content about bikes, components and racing. Here I found the exact catalog from 1979-80 of the bike I was working on. I nearly wept with joy.


5. Various Vintage Mad-assed Collectors - they are out there, and often have amazing websites like this one in Japan. That's who you are competing with on eBay. Here's an amazing archive of bikes at The Racing Bicycle, and another amazing collection by Ray Dobbins.

6. Classic Rendevous - a well known site for collectors, and a good place to see what is proper and appropriate restoration. You can go too far. Or can you?

7. Shimano Group Overview: I realise it's the devil's own spawn but should you need to check the correctness of some parts from the dark side, you can't beat this site. I have vintage 8 speed Shimano on my Eddie Merckx, which was tougher to get right than Super Record or 50th Anniversary.

8. Continental Components: obscure parts for vintage builds.

9. Yellowjersey.org: stockists of the restorer's gold - NOS or new old stock. I got various bolts and adjusters here that were proving impossible elsewhere.

10. Other blogs: more and more people are starting to write about their passions on the web. Here's a good one called Bottom Bracket - a million subjects but a lot of vintage bike stuff recorded for us to enjoy.

And above all else:

An enthusiastic LBS (local bike shop): young Daniel at Burkes in Wellington (let alone proprietor Peter Burke!) tolerated my dragging into the workshop and boring him senseless over some tiny jewel of a part which moved the project along all of 1%, but had taken months to find in new old stock. Also having the magic of people like Ross Bee (sadly no longer with us - lost his life in a bike race in 2008) who lavished more hand-crafted care on the paint jobs of my bikes than you would believe possible. Doug, Oli (at Roadworks), Antosh, you crazy bastards you're all out there and we thank you.

Bikes I Love: Bianchi Rekord 1979

The cheapest bike in the Dalton fleet by far – costing slightly more than one of Backie’s race tyres ($275) on TradeMe in NZ. Indulged over a twelve month period with 100 hours of searching for parts and information around the world on vintage bike sites, eBay and Trademe, plus a handcrafted paintwork restoration by the best in the business.

For all intents and purposes, it’s a new bike – most of the parts came in boxes older than some of the staff at R+R. And at a modest hourly chargeout rate, quite possibly the most expensive bike in the fleet.

And we won't even count the Creative Director's time spent researching the correctness of vintage parts and stickers for the build...


The Back Story to This Bike

It was the year America went to the movies and saw an amazing film – Breaking Away. The story of four friends finishing high school in Midwest USA in the 1970s, one of whom has an inexplicable passion for cycling Italian style. When the heroic Italian Cinzano team visit the region for a race, Stoller is forced to face down the demons of parental expectations, community intolerance of anything outside the norm and just growing up. But, like most of us, he turns out to be crappily average on the bike. But not so crap that he and his misfit buddies can’t enjoy the sweet taste of winning in their own world.

Bruce Springsteen must have been watching the movie when he wrote ‘The River’ a year later. No bikes in that song though.

Generations of young people like me identified with the movie’s vibe. The youthful rebellion, the inevitability of repeating our parent’s lives, taking a win where you can. And lusting after Italian bikes like the Masi Dave Stoller rode, Olmo and Bianchi. It was my second to last year of high school, and I now knew what cool looked like. It would be as long time before I had it.

Restored across 12 months in 2005 and 2006, the original frame was found languishing on TradeMe in NZ as a complete bike, one listing away from being sent to the Salvation Army by the guy’s wife. He’d been to America with his family in 1979, was mad about cycling and had saved up for years to buy something European and cool.


The so called ‘Auckland’ listing turned out to be in Albany, creating a logistics nightmare for recovering the bike. Eventually picked up by Andrew Venter and dropped off in Auckland for collection later. Upgrades over 25 years of using the bike for commuting meant not much was salvageable. Condition would be best described as worn. Only a mother could love it would be more precise.

The ragged condition made the decision about the restoration easy. It was so bad that there was little point in leaving it ‘original’.

In the 1990s I had sourced some random old Campy Super Record parts (pedals with ti spindles, 26.8mm seat post – no idea why other than they were beautiful) and these became the seeds of the rebuild.

To cut the costs of production, Bianchi took a single frame and made several bikes by fitting cheaper or more expensive parts. The remnants of mine were a bunch of Fiamme, Campagnolo, and Bianchi branded parts.

Combing the internet, I found gold – the original catalogue of models from that year from the USA, posted online by some kind hearted Bianchista.