Originally Posted by
Sir_Name
I'm loving this bike. It appears to be very well made, and has some nice (to my eye at least) details. The paint should clean up beautifully and appears to be very durable. There are a few nicks and scratches, no problem. The tires are dry rotted and toast. Wall art at best. The frame looks like it will fit up to a 27mm with a bit of room. Not sure where I'm going yet for tires, other than I'll wait for funds for something nice. I think Dugast Paris Roubaix (cotton) could be a nice fit.
Dating this thing is going to be tricky, if not impossible. I'm hoping to eventually whittle it down to within a 2-year span. Not sure how realistic that is - have done zero research so far and am only working from the very limited understanding I already have of Cannondale's first years. Thanks All for the bits of info here. The rear derailleur dates to '75 (guessing this has to pre-date the frameset by a few years at least). As of now, my SWAG is somewhere between 80-83. Any other guesses?
Ooh. We're going to need a complete breakdown of that bikes geometry and measurements.
The one I'm most interested in is the thickness of the rear dropouts. I'll measure the dropouts on all my ST bikes. I think your prototype is a bit thinner in the dropouts. What do you think? I also think it would be awesome if this had a different seat tube diameter than 27.2, that would only make it more special in my mind.
As for what year? Not to be snarky, but if that's a prototype Cannondale that's likely an '81 or '82, right? Maybe my logic is flawed but wouldn't a prototype be before the production run? Sure looks kind of like the ST series to me. That's my guess, and what I thought when I saw the listing. The components could be red herrings and this could have been a rework or just a custom frame built by an employee. Who knows. Still I like thinking about it as what I suspect it is, truly a prototype of the original Cannondale bicycles.
Which is what made it interesting to me, and why I posted it.