Bad Lag

Wait, I mean, WOW! Did anyone else watch the three video series on making Ghisallo wooden rims? That was awesome.

Chicodoodoo

KenNC, thanks for referencing that thread, which also has some great information and photos that I found most useful. There don't seem to be too many of these Ghisallos around, which certainly has me intrigued, especially given the history of mine, which languished for decades in my garage simply because my interest was transitioning to mountain bikes. My other two road bikes suffered the same fate, and they are still hanging unused in my garage to this day! In the meantime, I've been through dozens of mountain bikes, typically wearing the middle gears out from all the pedalling I've done. I'm known locally as "the bike guy", as I live in a smallish town (24,000) and no one else rides regularly around here. I used to do around 4000 miles a year on average, but I haven't used a cycle computer for several years now to know my mileage. But the trend was that I was slowing down as I entered my sixties, and I also started walking daily (picking up trash off the ground along the way to work my lower back) instead of riding. But I'm still riding, and I just attached an old cycle computer with a fresh battery to my current ride (Fisher Marlin) to see how badly I've slacked off. As long as the legs keep working, I will be riding. I once read that the world's oldest woman (120 something), a French lady, rode her bike regularly into her nineties. I'm thinking of following her example.

juvela

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forgot to mention above -

if you would like to run a cotterless chainset on the machine two models from Stronglight which would be plausible from a quality and time perspective would be the 49D and the TS.

alternately, you could go with one of the NERVAR Star series, pre-1976 version, or the NERVAR Sport.

a classy, tasteful and period correct option would be the Campag Sport. unfortunately it is a somewhat sought after collector item so tends to be costly when available.

for an Italian alloy cotterless economy set there is the OFMEGA Forgiato.

the Tourney which is on there now really sticks out like a sore thumb and should get replaced IMHO.

[all sets mentioned can be viewed at velobase.com]

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microcord

Familiar with them, no. But one of my LBSes had one in stock when I was last there.

Putting aside what else it may be, Ghisallo is a Japanese brand of frames, bikes, pumps, seatposts, rinkōbukuro (recently englished as "rinko") and whatnot.

The brand belongs to Fukaya, a Nagoya-based company that was formed (in Nagoya) in 1911. Fukaya has the rights in Japan to "Eddy Merckx" and sells a lot of other stuff too. (Yes, including sporty masks.)

There appear to be two models of frame/bike. There's the 306 (CrMo frame, carbon fork) and the 305 (CrMo frame and fork). The one I saw was the 305; it looked attractive but I didn't examine it closely because I wasn't looking for a new bike. The frame may well have had a sticker saying that it was made in Taiwan or China; certainly it wasn't made in Japan, as this would be a sales point in Japan and certainly would be advertised on the web page, but is not.

In at least one important sense, Ghisallo frames are highly traditional: or anyway, traditional for Japan. No, it's not merely the (CrMo) material or the horizontal top tube. It's the dimensions. The largest 306 has a seat tube of 55 cm (CT); for the largest 305 it's 54 cm. (I note that the "1984 Buyers' Guide", intended for US readers, has Zebrakenko frames [for example] in sizes up to 26 inches; for the Japanese market, the maximum size would have been 56 cm if you were lucky, 54 cm otherwise.) If Ghisallo had a 60 cm option, I could be interested.

I don't remember ever seeing a Ghisallo frame outside that shop. Perhaps they're commoner in the Nagoya area.

juvela

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https://cyclist.sanspo.com/417248/ghisallo

https://cyclist.sanspo.com/462779/img_9769

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Chicodoodoo

Hmm, I didn't realize Tourney was made by Shimano, just like the Titlist front derailleur. So can we say it is a hand-made Italian bike that's had a couple of Japanese transplants?

I struggled to hang the bike back up in my garage, so it may take me a while to get the courage to wrestle it back down again to check the BB cups. My garage ceiling is pretty high, and I need a ladder to get a good grip on the bike. We're talking old school manual storage here on a single hook that gets the bike out of the way.

juvela

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Thank you for the response.




https://www.museodelghisallo.it/en/p...rand-ghisallo/

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Chicodoodoo

I found my digital calipers, and this time I measured 26.2mm, just as you predicted. And my seat post is not fluted, as I mistakenly wrote! Not sure how I came up with that whopper. I must not have been square on the seat post to get 27mm. I grabbed the Omega pocket calipers again and remeasured, and this time they too said a hair over 26mm, so operator error clearly was the culprit. In my defense, I was measuring the seat post on the bicycle hanging from the ceiling, in poor light, and it was over my head and just barely within reach, which might help explain my error.