pandaparry

Hello,

I just bought a Pinarello ('85 Montello?), and cannot find anything about the tubing. The frame, headset and stem were bought together, rest (Graphite Campa) added later. I guess the bike has been resprayed at a certain point during which new decals were added, but I find it a bit strange that a real Pina (cannot find differences with a Montello, but of course could be another model) would have fake decals. Columbus Acciaio seems to exists, but cannot find anything on Acciano. Anyone seen this before? It reminds me of my 'hatended' Rolex I once bought on a market, but not much money can be made of selling decals I guess...
BTW, any way I can check whether this is actually a Montello and not another model from the line-up? I cannot find clear visual differences in the frame from the model 1985 model on speedbicycles (cannot post link) except for the crazy thick respray.

Thanks,

Kees

T-Mar

Welcome to the forums. That is an reproduction Columbus decal with a typo. It should be 'acciaio", which is Italian for steel. The subject decal is also one for Columbus SL or SP and not the proper SLX or SPX decal used on the Montello. Your frame certainly has all the signs of a Montello but verification would require removing the bottom bracket and checking inside the bottom ends of the tubes for the five helical ridges of Columbus SLX and SPX (see pic). The ridges are quite narrow (3.5mm) and thin (0.35mm), so can be quite hard to see, especially if any corrosion has set in.

Spaghetti Legs 

Ouch!

I just double-checked my replacement decals to make sure they were OK. Whew!

Chombi1 

Your Montello looks to have been refinished, that's why the decals is not correct.
If it is a Montello, it should at least be SLX tubing. Another possible sign that it was refinished is, usually the flower shaped cutouts on the lugs were filled in with contrasting color paint to highlight them, plus the decals look too perfect. Close to all Pinarellos of that era had decal deterioration problems and ones with perfect decals were usually kept hidden away. Mostly unridden in a controlled environment, hardly ever exposed to these outdoors/weather......Unless yours is one of those?
Regarding the paint job, from the looks of it, it might have been powdercoated,........unless they did not strip the old paint and painted over it with numerous coats that resulted in the lug details getting a bit muted.
BTW, one of the signature details on the Montellos is the triangular shaped bottom bracket reinforcement with a GTP pantograph on it, cast on the top of the bottom bracket she'll. On both sides. I think there was only one other Pinarello model that had this detail, the Gavia, which I think was either one model below or above the Montello, and came in a little bit later after the Montello.....

T-Mar

The other models with Pinarello's cast, bridgeless, bottom bracket shell was indeed the Gavia. It was above the Montello, using Columbus TSX and was introduced for the the 1990 model year, five years after the Montello. It is readily distinguished from the Montello via the faceted seat stay caps with dual Pinarello embossings (sorry, forums is not allowing me to attach pics right now. I'll try again later).

pandaparry

Thanks for the help.

The bike has the GTP pantographs on the top shell of the BB, so should be a higher end model. Also the bike has the pump-thingy at a certain location (see pic2), which I only saw once before for a 1984 model on Redvelo. The 1985 catalog doesn't show this, but not sure whether this was model-year related or something the buyer could request.
It will be my wife's bike, but will do some modifications before. Stripping and repainting is an option if this will give better details for the lugs. This is a bit ugly for such a beautiful bike. Also not sure whether that causes the surprising weight. At 57cm this bike weighs 10.5kg, the same as my 62cm Asolo which is lower end (though newer). Both have C-record era Campa, only difference is brakes (Monoplaner vs new) and wheels (6sp Victory? vs 8sp Record). I would expect almost 1kg less...

I am undecided about parts. The current graphite Chorus looks quite nice on the current colour, but scratches are very visible. I have the larger part of an old super-record groupset lying around. This would be more in line with the beautiful model on Redvelo, but the catalogs show more models with C-Record (not willing to go for something new, so either graphite Chorus or Super Record). I guess the price I paid (600euro for decent paint model with all Campa) is very decent. If I can do a respray and get the remaining Super Record parts for 400e, would be a very nice bike for 1000 euro...

Chombi1 

It could only be a Montello or a Gavia. The Montello has a conventional flat seatstay top cap with a GTP pantograph on it, while the Gavia has a faceted double faced seatstay top with "PINARELLO" pantographed on it.

T-Mar

Here are the Gavia stay caps, which distinguish it from a Montello. I don't know why uploading them was giving me such grief, yesterday.