Bikes I love: Benotto Modelo 3000 c1980

Between 2004 and 2007, the gang at R+R in Wellington NZ undertook a variety of vintage racing bike renovation projects.

The full story of the history of this Benotto will be told by Robbo at some stage, but needless to say it is a beautiful thing. To be accurate, they are beautiful things. In the end two bikes were completed - when in true Murphy's Law sense, after a year of searching the globe 2 came up in succession on eBay - one in Minnesota and one in California.

Robbo's intent was to rebuild a bike dear to him from the early 1980s in Europe - with his original Campagnolo 50th anniversary groupset, one of the few that must have actually ever been raced (as opposed to locked away in a cupboard to admire from time to time).

Having taken so much guidance on what was authentic on my restoration of a 1979 Bianchi, we knew the result with the Benotto would be spectacular. After securing the bikes back to NZ (most of the parts from which were set aside, as they'd been modified over the intervening decades), the hunt was on for NOS (new old stock) components to fill the gaps.

One of the most interesting was the Benotto handlebar tape. I took up cycling later in the 1980s when this horrible stuff had been surpassed by gaudy padded cork tapes, and never had to endure gripping the cold slippery, hard as nails stuff.

Some evil petrochemicals must lurk in the recipe for this tape as the package arrived in the mail with the colour unfaded after 25 years on the shelf.

New decals were prepared by Photoshop guru Brent Backhouse from scratch, the frame painted by the late Ross Bee (after much debate on the precise colour - Dave was pretty sure Ross had some left over in his garage from a respray of the original bike!) and suitable rims obtained for the hubs. A missing front hub from the 50th anniversary set took 9 months to find on the web.

All in all, I suspect Signor Giacinto Benotto would be as proud of the result as he is showing the world the Benotto 3000 Tour of Italy special edition on this advertisement. Bella!

Vintage Cycling Postcards - 1958 Corriere dello Sport

Corriere dello Sport was a main Italian sporting newspaper, and this card promotes the 1958 motorcycle and bicycle show. I've seen this card on eBay for up to 40 euros, I got it in the same batch as the Bartali and Coppi cards in 1994.

On the reverse it has a lovely stamp and postmark.

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Gino Bartali with Giordani Bike

Another in my postcard collection from that trip to the Giro d'Italia in the 1990s.

The rivalry between Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi is well documented on Wikipedia, so I won't attempt to add to the existing catalog of observation and opinion on the subject. Gino was a legend in his own right, even without the rivalry that stopped a nation.

Personally blessed by 3 popes, and known as Gino the Pious, he died at the grand age of 85 in 2000 after open heart surgery .

Like all postcards, I struggle to guess if it's a fake or real. Finding it in an Italian flea-market in 1994 gives me some confidence it's not a digital print, as technology was not that great then. Nor had the internet made a global market for cycling memorabilia.

I found one the same recently on eBay in Italy for 15 euros that looks pretty similar, though the signature has some interesting variations and the picture has a pure black and white treatment where mine has a blue tone. You decide which is real!

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Eddy Merckx

I've bought a lot of stuff on eBay over the years, particularly when it comes to restoring vintage racing bikes.

I think this postcard might count as the dodgiest thing I've ever obtained, 99% likely to be a simple reproduction (including the signature) - which is pretty much impossible to tell on the web, and hard enough to tell in the flesh in this era of digital printing. I've seen way too many of this card since with the signature in identical position!

That said, I didn't pay much and it celebrates The Cannibal in full racing pose on one of the 2 coolest racing bikes in history.

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Fausto Coppi Bianchi 1953 World Champion

One of my bikes is a Fausto Coppi Lugano 53, a steel bike made in the 1990s to celebrate the great Fausto Coppis' world championship win in Switzerland in 1953.

Coincidentally, I also have a signed postcard (the signature on the back matches the sticker on the bike uncannily - I guess he autographed about a million things in his time!) celebrating his win in Switzerland.


Coppi also cleaned up the Giro that year, one of only a handful of cyclists ever to win a major tour and the Worlds in the same year. Chapeau!

Cycling Vintage Postcards - Fausto Coppi Emotonico 1946

The story of Fausto Coppi has been written many times, and I've no need to try to outdo any of the authors.

When we were in Italy to see the 1995 Giro D'Italia, we found ourselves stuck in Florence on a quiet Sunday morning. We're read about a Sunday market in the hills nearby, with a bus that went to Fiesole, leaving only a 5km walk along country roads.

One of the treasures collected that day was some bike racing postcards from the 1940s and 1950s - plenty of the stall holders refused to sell us anything being foreigners, but somehow my passion for cycling won out.

This card dates from the period when Coppi was restarting his career after the war. As a prisoner in a low security environment he had enjoyed a small opportunity to get back on his bike, and came out of retirement with the minimum of sponsors, one of whom was Emotonico.

He won 3 stages of the Giro in 1945, competed in several other major races and his career, once in danger of being starved to death by the deprivations of life as a POW was reborn, with life on a major trade team.

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: 1930 BSA Racer

A friend returned from the antique store in Devonport in Auckland wondering aloud why a company would build a bike in the 1990s with wooden wheels. An hour later there was a new bike in the family. Platinum plated frame (before chrome plating was possible), cane rims and last ridden in the 1930s this bike bleeds passion for cycling. It originated in Christchurch, and was sold at auction in a household lot in 1995. I like to imagine a tragic tale of a young kiwi officer from a wealthy Canterbury family, so passionate for racing he had his bike completely platinum plated, putting it away in the summer of 1939 as he answered the call of the Empire, only to be cut down in fierce action on Crete and the bike stored away in sorrow for the next 50 years. Wherever that young man may be, the BSA’s in good hands today.

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.

Bikes I Love: Merckx MX Leader 1998

The bike of champions made by the greatest champion himself. Bright orange, with lairy pink and yellow championship bands, retrofitted with authentic Campagnolo Record components from the era.

The same frame took a youthful Lance Armstrong to a world championship on the road. Brutally heavy, and in a world of carbon fibre, titanium and magnesium, this bike records the last time steel was used in anger to win anything.

The frame weighs three times a Bianchi FG Lite, but rumours that Nigel weighs three times Brent have been reliably scotched.