Some of you may remember this old Bottecchia frame from a previous post by fellow forum member CarltonRaleigh . Well, it has made it's way (less the components shown here) into Kommisar's garage and is about to become the subject of a new long term Bottecchia project. The frame shows some older Bottecchia features and some transitional ones: the fork crown is classic Bottecchia used since at least 1950. The seat cluster is also the style that was popular in the 50's and early 60's, a sort of socket style lug with cutouts though not identical to any particular previous year. The head lugs however are long point lugs more like those on the later Bottecchias though not quite as graceful as the late 60's bikes. I can narrow it down for certain to the range of 1963 to 1968 since I have pictures of known 1962 and 1969 bikes. My guess is 65-67. At any rate it is a great example of a high-end factory Bottecchia frame from the 60's period when Bottecchia was having great sucess with the Molteni-Bottecchia racing team.

Now comes the hard part. There are precious few useful examples of Bottecchias from this period. I know of no actual bikes and the few pictures that can be found on the web are too lacking in detail to be of much use. Bottecchia Blue, a dark metallic blue, was Bottecchia's racing color in the 60's and is the color I will go with on this frame along with red pin striping and lug lining, basically the same as my 1972 bike. Decals will be an issue. The down tube uses a 'hotdog' shaped decal with 'Bottecchia' script. Older models used a beige panel under the decals but I don't know if that was still the case by this period. The seat tube decals are basically an unknown. I've seen a couple of different examples but don't have clear pictures of any of them. I may need someone like JRrestore to use a little artistic license to create one (you out there JR? ). At any rate, this is likely to be one of those projects that takes a couple of years as my wife would kill me if I went out and spent a bundle of money on it. Stay tuned for periodic updates.