rosieate

Hi everyone -

I know there are several ID's on here, but I have looked and looked through the forum archives, catalogs on other sites, etc., and can't find this bike. I just bought it and the mystery is very exciting.

It looks like an early (celeste!) '80's Bianchi, Columbus Tretubi sticker, Piaggio sticker, Campagnolo Nuovo Record derailleurs, Campy Record hubs, and Universal 77 brakes. There are Campy cranks also but I think those may be aftermarket. TTT stem and handlebars. The vestiges of a Nuova Racing sticker seem to be on the top tube.


My only problem is: the pantograph on the front fork is different than the pantographs I've seen on bikes from this era. Most of them seem to just have a simple "B". This bike has two parallel lines and the full word "Bianchi" pantographed on the fork crown.


Sorry the bike is so dirty in the pictures, I had just started cleaning it when I took them.
Any ideas?

Otis

That fork crown is typical for a Nuovo Racing or Rekord model from the very early 80's.

spacemanz

Howdy, & welcome to the forum! I'm not an expert at all, LOL, but I can help a little. The Tretubi means three tubes are Columbus, and the rest is something else. That doesn't make it junk, not by a long shot, it's just not "as" good as a full Columbus frame. I'm sure you could have done a LOT worse, that's probably a very decent frame. And for what it's worth, I like that pantographing stuff too (probably most of us here do).

verktyg 

I have a 1981 Bianchi Campione Del Mondo with a Columbus Tretubi sticker. As mentioned above only the 3 main tubes are Columbus, probably light gauge SL tubing. The forks and stays are most like made of Falck tubing. The bike is very light. It rides and handles great.





Your bike is probably later than a 1981 model.

ericzamora

I've always believed Tretubi meant the main triangle is Columbus SL, the rest Columbus SP. ALL are Columbus tubing. No?

eric
fresno, ca.

T-Mar

No. During this era, if it was an SL/SP combination it would have just the generic (i.e. no tubeset name) Columbus decal. Also, the Bianchi SL/SP mix frames were primarily SL with the heavier gauge SP in the down tube and chainstays, to stiffen the bottom bracket for spints and climbing. Eventually Bianchi would apply the SuperSet name to frames having the heavier gauge down tubes and chainstays. Columbus would eventually come out with a decal having an "SL/SP' designation for builders who mixed these sets and to distinguish them from the tretubi frames.

A tretubi frame has lesser grade materials in the stays and sometimes forks. SL and SP were both made from the same chromium-molybdenum steel alloy. Consequently, they were just considered different gauges of the same grade material and mixing the two wasn't considered tretubi.

In a tretubi frame the lesser grade material could be the same or a different brand. In the early 1980s, the lesser grade material in tretubi SL or tretubi SP frames was generally Columbus Aelle, which was a carbon manganese steel alloy, or chromium-molybdenum Falck tubing. There were also lower grade tretubi Aelle frames which typically used Columbus Zeta (high carbon steel alloy) or a generic hi-tensile steel for the stays and blades.

Bianchigirll 

Hello Rosieate, welcome to the forums. Nice looking but dirty Bianchi. My first stop with that would be the carwash with some old bottle brushes and big bottle of Simple Green.

That was a typicl but I don't think common fork crown crown from the era. This looks typical of '81-83 Nouvo racing. In typical fashion the catalog doesn't really address the '12 V' thing but I believe that is just a tagline to denote this as having a 6spd freewheel rather than a 5 like the bikes below it. The crank is certainly an upgrade most bikes of this level carried Ofmega or GipMe cranks.

The catalog just says Columbus main tubes with Falck stays.





Rosie would you post a good pic of the Bianchi decal, hopefullt before cleaning, especially the area around the B, I want to see if there are any remnants of the two little dashes like on Verktyg's Bianchi.

shoota 

OT: BG, what brake levers are those in your last pic?

Bianchigirll 

None of the above bikes are mine. Vektyg's Bianchi I believe has drilled CampI G.S. levers, maybe non CampI hoods

muzpuf

That is a 1981 Nouva Racing 12/v which used the same lined fork tops as the rekord but still has a standalone piaggio sticker made in Italy

muzpuf

shoota 

I see what you did there lol.

Did those levers come that way originally or was that done to them later?

verktyg 

Hi BG,

The 1981 Campione Del Mondo was a "special model designed for the Belgian Bianchi Racing team".

They used a mishmash of Campy components on these bikes: Gran Sport cranks with a panto'd SR large chainring, NR pedals, Record hubs, NR derailleurs, Gran Sport brakes with Super Record levers, a panto'd NR seatpost and a Gran Sport headset.

The previous owner changed the brakes to pre CPSC NR calipers with flat QR levers and put on a set of Gipiemme Retro Friction down tube levers. I've been using Simplex Retro Frictions since the mid 70s but these Gipiemme lever are far smoother! It has Modolo brake lever hoods in great condition so I'm not going to change them.

Also, the rims were changed from sewups to clinchers. I changed the seat (still experimenting) and pedals.

As T-Mar pointed out, Tretubi bikes were made with a wide variety of mixed tubes. I can tell very quickly the difference between SP and SL tubes. My 1987 Giro is made of Formula Two tubing and rides like a truck (snide comment). It's also over a pound heavier than the CDM.





The CDM rides just like most of my other Columbus SL bikes, nice and smooth! ;-)

Some top quality Italian bikes were made of Falck tubing. Frejus and Legnano bike came with either Falck or Reynolds 531 tubes during the 70s. Some of the all campy models had Falck tubing while some of the lower end bikes were Reynolds! We sold both brands and couldn't tell any difference in the ride between the 2 makes of tubes.





My CDM weighs ~22 Lbs with clinchers. It was most likely made in the Reparto Corse shop. Those bikes came with Campy dropouts while standard production bikes used other makes of dropouts.

Bianchigirll 

I like the ride of my Formula 2 Trofeo but then I also love rideof my Proto so I like a stiffer ride. An 87 Giro with Formula 2 tubing is quite a score I think until '88 most Giros had SL/SP frames.

BentLink

That's a darn pretty bike! I like the turbo saddle--good match if it fits your anatomy.

verktyg 

BG,

This was my first Bianchi, an 87 Giro. Got it from someone in SoCal. Probably had less than 50 miles on it. The bike was either in a flood or someone rode it on the beach. The undersides of all the components were corroded and the BB complete rust!

eBay picture:


Formula Two decal:


After I set it up for myself:

spacemanz

Hey, I'm the proud owner of what the seller called a 1971 Frejus with Reynolds 531 tubing. It's pretty hard finding good info on Frejus bikes, but I've looked several times at Classic Rendezvous, & yes, I registered my serial # there (it's the oddball looking #, & I'm Cliff). I'm 90% sure it's a Campimissimo, which is a Professional, but with Campy dropouts. I'd love to hear anything you remember about these bikes, and I have a thread here on this forum, if you'd rather post there than this thread. Thanks.

Bianchigirll 

A Victory with Synchro, that is an '88 it has those decals with the line running through it. Great looking bike, love thos Victory cranks.

verktyg 

BG, just for you...



Recently there was some discussion in the CR group about the date of the Bianchi catalog posted in Mark Bulgier's website:

https://bulgier.net/pics/bike/Catalogs/Bianchi-88/

He had the catalog dated 1986 but several of the cognoscenti pointed out that it was from 1988.

When I was prospecting for info on my Giro I used the "1986" date to conclude that my bike was a 1987 model. It had 1st generation Campy Synchro shift levers which came out in 1987. Also the Campy axle nuts were dated 87...

This catalog page shows the bike in brownish maroon but they came in Celeste too.



The bike came with a 13-26 Shimano 6 speed twist tooth freewheel. After about 3+ hours of switching chains, freewheels, shift cables etc. I gave up on trying to get the Synchro lever to index shift. I didn't work smoothly in friction mode either!



I put on a set of Synchro II levers and no joy there either! Ended up removing the indexing guts and made it a permanent friction shifter. With an SRAM PC47 chain a good 13-28T FW it works reasonably well with 50-36 chainrings.

Campy didn't put much faith in the future of index shifting back the - it was for new-bees. ;-(

My guess is that they were more interested in avoiding a patent infringement battle with Shimano that making a product that worked!

Since I'd have to change a bunch of online info (Flickr and so on) it's going to remain a 1987 Giro!

Bianchigirll 

Rosie sorry for hijacking your thread.

Yes I was the main instigator of that just before I left the CR group. Among other things it seemed odd to have bike with the Argentin commerative paint in the '86 catalog which would have been printed 8-10 months before he won the championships! They also don't show the entire catalog for any year just a few top models.

Depending on the Syncro insert a shimano FW would have been correct. I keep going back rereading the index section of the dancing chain but I still don't understand everything about this. CampI shifters always shifted 'late' whatever that means, so shifting late became a big issue for CampI when it came to index. They were loathe to copy a shimano or suntour design and, yes, also believed indexing would be a fad. The Dancing chain doesn't address patent infringment issues (I think the slant parrallelogram patent was expired anyway** but they certainly didn't want to be seen copying a shimano design.

I am actually trying to get a bike set up to take another run at it this summer. I may try my Cornelo w/ Triomphe and use Syncro 2 levers. It already has a shimano 7spd cassette so it may work, sort of LOL

Cleave

Hello rosieate, I worked at a bike shop in the mid-1980s that sold Bianchis (among other brands) and I recognize the Nuovo Racing with the Tretubi decal from that timeframe. My understanding was that the three main tube were double-butted CrMo but not SL or SP and the remaining tubes were straight gauge CrMo. It was a very good entry-level race bike at the time.

T-Mar

At the time the OP's bicycle was manufactured, tretubi frames used SL or SP main triangles and given the size, the OP's bicycle is almost certainly an SL main triangle. The Columbus decal specifically indicates butted tubing and the lack of identification indicates it uses SL and/or SP. There was only one other butted Columbus during during this era and was the very light KL. I doubt it was offered in tretubi form, let alone on a mid-range model, and if it had been there would have a "tretubi KL" decal, similar to the "tretubi Aelle" decal.

This all changed circa 1985 when Bianchi started utilizing customized tubesets from Columbus. The exact nature of the tubesets is unknown, but they were likely based on existing tubesets. For instance, the Bianchi Forumla II tubeset is believed to be based on Columbus Matrix/Cromor, which a mid-range, seamed, butted, CrMo tubeset.

rosieate

Hi guys -

Thanks for all the help! The thread really blew up while I was off camping. I've been riding for years (no car) but this is my first foray into bike history. The Columbus info is really fascinating.

Bianchigirll, I looked and looked and there were no vestiges of those dashes on the logo. This is the best pic I have of the decal - the bike has been stripped to be repainted and re-decal-ed. I saw them in the old catalogs, so I wanted to check. I did mid-clean find (what I think is) a serial. It also had a decal on one side of the front fork that I didn't post, so here it is.




Muzpuf, thanks for the ID!

I've sent the bike off to a bike wizard here (Dave Porter, he builds bikes also) to be repainted and hunted down the original headset. Should be pretty beautiful once it's done, I think.

I really like the all celeste everything look on that Giro, but I have white benotto tape, which would be pretty flossy and period appropriate. Red would be awesome too.