Originally Posted by
s70rguy
About the blue Presto with P1038: just give the owner of Presto, Loek Valk a call. You can probably reach him on weekdays at the Oostzaan Presto shop.
I'm seeing the former supervisor of the Gazelle racing workshop in a couple of weeks, i'll ask him about a possible Presto-Gazelle connection.
I've spoken with Mr Loek Valk this morning. I got nice insights.
The blue 'Gazelle A-frame' Presto is not a Gazelle in disguise. It is more the other way round. It predates the A-frame and is of the hand of Mr. Slesker who build at Presto before Legrand/Serier start building. Slesker had been connected to Locomotief previously and Locomotief were taken over by ....Gazelle. There Slesker introduced the Champion Mondial A-frame (and AA-frame CM). That is why it looks like the A-frame.
So that model Presto is more or less the father of all A-frames. It is not exactly like an A-frame btw, for example the bb lug is slightly more decorative, there is a squarish tube instead of the the butterfly bridge and the lugs have seen more filing.
About how to recognize who built your frame Loek told me this: Frames by Serier did came with the slotted clamp and the seatstay tops with ridges. Serier was more into that kind of detailing in general. He were involved with fine mechanics initially. Without ridges denotes Jan Legrand, except for the TI Raleigh bikes. This is done to make them more look like the catalogue Raleighs. The frames Loek built also came with the slotted clamp, but Loek did not use the squarish brake bridge, but a part of Cinelli instead.
On the TI Raleigh connection: By far most if not all Team TI Raleigh bicycles were made by Jan in the Presto shop at the Haarlemmerstraat in Amsterdam, not in Ilkeston. Interesting thing is the Bulgier site shows and article with Jan in Ilkeston. Maybe there was a certain interest to present it that way. As if they were all made along the 'regular' SB's.
Back in the day you could also see many TI Team bikes parked in the A'dam shop. Among other teams that raced on by Presto built frames were Le Jeune (Jan Janssen) and Ketting.
Next to the TI Raleighs Jan did also still build Prestos. Frame production by the masterbuilders lasted untill ca 1982. The assumption of 500 made between '74 and '79 (see earlier in this topic) could be true, but in total the number could be significantly more. Numbering was sometimes a bit ''natte vinger werk'' (not always very accurate) and there are more systems through the years. According to Loek quite a lot Prestos made it into the US. They were exported to there by someone from Belgium (I unfortunately do not recall the name of)
After 1982 not much happened for a while. We briefly discussed an early 90s Presto example I encountered somewhere on the web recently. The particular Max tubing frame is still build in Holland and not outsourced to Italy or so. It is possibly built by Loek himself or another person I do not recall name of.
I think I pretty much covered all now.