Originally Posted by
AdventureManCO
I appreciate everyone's thoughts and comments! I have yet to try out the bike, but hopefully I'll get some nice daytime photos outside for you all to see.
I just checked and it appears as though Velocals has some of the decals I was looking for, which is awesome. I am going to remove the computer wire from the front end, and start cleaning things up.
I'm pretty tubular illiterate, btw. Is there a way to tell if the tape or glue is still good? I hear there is a danger of the tube coming off rolling around fast corners? I'm not planning any fast cornering, but would rather know what I'm getting into before I'm actually in the middle of it.
Any idea what an original type of bar tape would have been? I'm really open to suggestions on cleaning up and fine tuning everything with this one.
There are two ways a tubular can roll. One is loss of adhesion to the rim; the other is loss of adhesion between the tire and the backing tape that covers the stitching. The second is the one I would actually be more wary of with tires that old, not that I am ruling out the first. I would pump them up to 1/2 pressure, grab the rim with both hands, and use your thumbs to try to push the tire off the rim. Repeat at several points around the rim. See what happens. If they seem solid, a test ride should be fine, but I would be inclined still to keep it fairly short and don't rip around corners. But people ride on spares all the time that, while they may/should have been prepped with a layer of glue, aren't really glued on to normal standards.
I am pretty frugal, but I'd be circumspect about riding tires that old for very long. If they seem sound, keep them for spares, but it would be worth it to invest a pair of something pretty nice for that caliber of bike. You want to be able to put it through its paces without a nagging voice in your head telling you to slow down; remember those tires.
Beautiful bike, great find.