vlicon

The Eroica build of my 1986 Bianchi Trofeo is almost complete. I've been scanning the internet for a choice of shoes. I've seen the 1976 Vittorias and most listings are either out of my size or have them only with holes for Look style cleats. Exactly what hole pattern will I need for clips in cages and straps? Does anyone have suggestions for shoes?

Brad L 

Yellowjersey has cleats that will fit the Look bolt pattern. They won't fit the Vittoria 1976 shoes, but there are other new shoes available with a vintage look that will.

Personally, I found a pair of vintage Dettos to use when cleats are warranted, and a pair of 80s Sidi touring shoes for when they're not. Both have held up well.

randyjawa 

Though I love older bikes I do not like older pedals, straps and traps. I am an spd guy but have stumbled upon different sets of shoes and cleats, over the years.

I think that I still have these shoes and I will never use them (size 9, as I recall). Will put them up for sale in a week, or so, when I get back to the lake cottage...

rocks in head 

I could never get the Yellow Jersey cleat slot to slip in nicely to the ridge on the Nuovo Record pedals. I solved the issue by posting WTB here and purchased a set of Sidi shoes with a two bolt pattern slotted cleat. You can see the difference in slot width, and as soon as you put a foot on the ground with the yellow jersey cleats the plastic tends to deform into the slot. I'm not a huge fan of either and am thinking of putting some vintage Look pedals on the Alpine (keeping the NR/Sidi combo for an eventual Eroica type event).

steve sumner

BITD our shop sold Vittoria shoes. IMO they are too narrow for most American feet.
look for Sidi's and you can't go wrong. slotted cleats were once nailed on. which could
still work if you can't find the right match of holes in cleats/shoes. my cleats for Cinelli
pedals (the original clipless,which I still use) are held on with a bunch of small screws.

Salamandrine 

The shoes that were used with toe clips and straps did not use any hole pattern in use today. The cleats generally had a proprietary bolt pattern and came with the shoes. Shoes before about the mid 70s came without cleats. Cleats were bought separately and nailed on.

At any rate cleated cycling shoes like everyone used to use are essentially extinct. I think maybe there is some guy in Spain making them. What you can find are numerous retro 'touring' shoes. These don't have cleats at all. You'll lose some torque in certain situations, but they are probably a better choice for Eroica anyway. There have been numerous threads on vintage style shoes in the last couple years. Good idea to look through them.

paste something like this into google.

cycling shoes site:bikeforums.net/classic-vintage/

keithdunlop

I tried the Yellow Jersey cleats as well and could not get them to engage properly on toe clip pedals - the slot is a hair too narrow.

I would keep looking for a pair of the Vittoria 1976 in your size. They come up on eBay quite a bit. Just be aware that there are two styles, one for SPD cleats, and a 3-hole version that will take a classic cleats for toe clip pedals.

For the actual cleat, I can highly recommend the Exustar E-C101-AL. It's metal and engages in classic pedals really well. I'm using these with my Vittoria 1976 3-hole shoes and I'm very happy.

keithdunlop

I should clarify that 3-hole Look pattern shoes work perfectly well with the Exustar cleats - you just don't use the third top hole.

Manny66 

I used a Dremel and made the slot a little bit wider, it worked pretty good after a little trim.

Bad Lag

Buy a new pair of Detto Pietros. They still make them.

randyjawa 

Sorry, the shoes in post #3 are gone. I forgot that a fellow forum member has them now. He was good enough to remind me.

HeyItsSara

I mostly wear vintage shoes. Look on Etsy, Ebay and such resellers.

Stronglight56

If you wear Euro size 44 or smaller, I've seen a number of vintage shoes on eBay. I wear a 46 though and the selection is slim. That's a perennial issue for me. I posted photos of some new old stock 1960's shoes below. They take nail-on cleats but I don't know that I will put cleats on them. You may want to look online but like you, it is SO difficult to find my size. If you go on eBay and run a search for 'nail on cleats' you will see a rather large selection of loose cleats with nails, For the actual shoes, the key is watching eBay like a hawk for your size to come along... and then do not dither, grab them immediately. With the recent popularity of Erocia events, suddenly what was old and dorky is now new and haute; these items are getting harder to find and with rarity, the prices go up.

I think you will need to find leather-soled shoes for those ‘nail-on’ cleats to work though... not sure they will stay in plastic or not crack composite soles - I’d definitely steer clear of driving nails into carbon fiber. I've just opted to tighten my straps enough that my feet don't slip out on the upstroke and that works well for me. It also makes it a hell of a lot easier to take my foot out without the added step of reaching down to loosen the strap.

Like you, I've been looking at the Vittoria 1976s. Alternately, there are also two companies in England that make handmade, leather-soled shoes, one company is quite reasonably priced although they make up for that in shipping. There is another in Belgium selling handmade Spanish shoes that someone else here posted. Those look very nice too and they’ve an option for cleats or no cleats - info below.
————

For my bikes with toe cages I’d been using a pair of SPD mountain bike shoes with rather hefty soles. They work in the clips but are quite bulky and just don’t have the elegant cool factor of vintage and retro European road shoes.

So, I began reminiscing about how I transitioned from riding in trainers and the first road shoes I bought, a pair of black Detto Pietros (dP) Gosh. I loved those shoes! They breathed indredibly well because of the broguing (i.e. perforations) all along the uppers and they just looked elegant and sleek. They were also lace-up shoes which, to this day I still prefer to velcro or ratcheted cabling... but I still clip hedges with hand shears, listen to LPs, use shoe trees, and enjoy friction shifting — oh and the best cars have a manual transmission.

I rode those dP-s until they fell apart but alas, when I went to replace them, the shops had moved on to selling clipless pedals and cleats, I couldn't find clipless cycling shoes anywhere. My first SPD cleats were a pair of yellow and black Sidi's. I left the Dettos in my cupboard for a while and then reluctantly tossed them out during a purge several years later.


About 10 years after I’d tossed them in the bin, I was in a thrift shop and felt my hair stand on end with excitement when I saw a table stacked with about 30 cerulean blue Detto Pietro boxes. I thought it beyond belief – I’d surely open the box and find something else inside them like macramé kits. I think I’ve still got my ‘dP’ shoebox in a storage loft full of mix tapes at my mum’s. But indeed, the boxes were full of beautifully perforated, lace-up, black, new-in-the-box Pietros. Evidently, the local bike shop had donated some old stock...and they were only $5 a pair! Alas, I went through every box looking for my size but they were all only suited for the feet of either petite women or large children. I was so disappointed. If I’d had any inkling that there would soon be something called 'the internet' and 'eBay', I’d have bought them all and resold them but it was 1995 and the internet was still fledgling.
Until recently, I’ve exclusively used SPDs and Speedplay clip-less options. The thing I came to love about using my SPD mountain bike shoes though was that, despite the little metal cleat, I could walk normally in them when I had to get off my bike for some reason. This was especially important when touring and having to go into a store or café, not to mention the walking about I have to do prepping for a ride. I put my shoes on last but there’s always the one or two things you realize you forgot to put in your pocket as you’re about to leave. But the beefy tread on my SPDs also helped not to destroy the cleat, a problem with classic road shoes, especially with plastic cleats - the metal ones work wonders on wood floors.

Full of padding and hyper-masculine burly rubber tread. putting those MTB shoes into toe cages and straps was pushing the limits and they just didn’t have the elegance of a nice classic pair of old Italian ‘clipless’ shoes.



(above & below) comparison of vintage Italian road shoes with the modern MTB shoes I use for touring.



I perused eBay, nothing in size 46. As long as they weren’t too narrow, I could take a gamble and squeeze into larger-fitting 45s if I wanted and for some reason, we used to think we had to wear our cycling shoes far too tight but even 45s are rare. Finally, I found a 1960s new old stock Italian pair in my size with leather soles and in excellent, unused condition. There is no branding on them, the seller listed them as 'Cortina 300' but they look much like the old Dettos or any other Italian cycling shoe from that era. I paid $67 for them with tax and shipping and they arrived smelling like mothballs but looking brand-new. I decided to pay the $50 to have rubber glued over the leather soles to help preserve them and give me a bit of grip in the pedals without using the nail on cleats -now they smell like tje leather and shoe polish of a cobbler’s shop. I may nail on cleats eventually but for now, I want to be able to walk in them if I need, without doing the duck waddle.
.Additionally, here is what I found during my long search for vintage or retro leather cycling shoes to use with toe clips.

.

• A company named William Lennon & Son, an English bootmaker specializing in workwear, makes surprisingly affordable and handmade leather cycling shoes. I’ll definitely be ordering a pair one day soon. They are designed to fit our often wider British and American feet; Italian shoes, like the ones I just bought, are often narrow. If you contact William Lennon & Son and send an outline of your foot, they will make you a bespoke pair. I’ve seen versions with the broguing for ventilation and various colors. The Arturo is the standard version you can buy right off their website - looks a bit like the shoes I had to wear to school. https://www.rufflander.co.uk/shop/he...ro-cycle-shoe/

• Reynolds is another English shoemaker that makes beautiful cycling shoes and other leather accessories. The ones I like the look of are $302.40, they are just a bit dear for this cheapskate. https://reynolds-england.com

• Vittoria, as you mentioned, makes some rather nice looking retro shoes that accept SPD cleats but also have enough of a sole to allow you to walk normally and safely inside a supermarket or restaurant. I’ve read though that, like my MTB shoes, you still feel the cleat clicking a bit on floors and pavement. Check out the Vittoria 1976 Classic SPD Nylon TPU Sole Cycling Shoes – They make them in white, I do like white road shoes rather a lot. I’d like to grab a pair of these one day too and I’ve found them at some rather low prices for smaller sizes but for 46s, it is going to set me back about $180

.
Santafixie is a British seller who also stocks the Lombardía Touring shoe along with an interesting selection of other options. But again, in these Spanish retro shoes, note the dearth of larger sizes available on the santafixie website. https://blog.santafixie.co.uk/proou-...-21st-century/. Is it popularity and demand or that cyclists, on average, don’t have large feet?

for now, I am very happy with my vintage shoes.

jeirvine 

OP: What size feet do you wear? Someone here may have a spare pair that would fit. (I do.)

moto tom

This has been a very informative and helpful thread .. I've been riding my '74 Grand Jubile' the past five years having stored it for about 30 ;-) I've made some upgrades to it, tires/rims/bottom bracket, but like the vintage look and feel of it and made the decision to keep the original toe clips with straps and forgo the more modern clips/shoes. So I've been using NB training shoes which are very light weight, but quite flexy in the sole. Now that I'm in much better shape and digging in on hills more, the flex has become detrimental. I've gone through this thread trying to decide if I should order a pair of retro biking shoes with a stiffer sole, or find carbon fiber inserts to use in my NB shoes. The problem is, I wear a size 14 (50 euro) and the choices are limited to the custom made British shoes it appears. After some research on the net I found some ESTCARBON carbon fiber inserts on Amazon. They are very thin .. a few mm .. and very light in weight (see sideview in photo). The website recommends ordering a size smaller, so I ordered 13 1/2, and they fit perfectly. (they can be trimmed with good scissors or sandpaper).

After a hot and sweaty ride this morning through PA Dutch country, I'm really pleased with the fit, feel and performance of these inserts. I typically ride the same 27 mi. route, fairly hilly, and my ave speed (Garmin and Strava) was .3 mph higher than I'd ever ridden. I usually average in the high 14s, and only hit the low 15s when the wind in favorable. It's only one ride, but I could really tell I was getting more force into my down pedal with no shoe flex. It will be fun to see if I can maintain this speed. (I'm 71 BTW)

The only downside is the inserts cost $55 each. But, like many things we do for our hobbies, the money spent feels well worth it since it adds to the enjoyment.

Hope this info can help someone else who's heard "throw away the shoes and wear the boxes" too many times ;-).
Tom

bikeman68

[QUOTE=steve sumner;21444217]BITD our shop sold Vittoria shoes. IMO they are too narrow for most American feet.
look for Sidi's and you can't go wrong. slotted cleats were once nailed on. which could
still work if you can't find the right match of holes in cleats/shoes. my cleats for Cinelli
pedals (the original clipless,which I still use) are held on with a bunch of small screws.[/QUOTE Are there any late model Vittorias that are narrow? The last time I had an Italian bike shoe that laced up well around my thin feet, it was the Nylon mesh Duegis with plastic sole/plastic slotted single bolt cleats in the 80s. So I still have hard time filling out bike shoes, I wish more bike soe makers honored having narrow widths