Marinoni Special
 

hello,
i've been lurking on the C+V forums for a bit...enjoying the great and sometimes inspirational builds that are posted here. i've also come to realize that there is quite a crowd of marinoni fans. here is mine that i put together a few years back from an odd arrangement of parts that i found appealing.

there are a few things that i'm curious about though. i've noticed that most of these frames have maple leaf cut-outs on the lugs, whereas mine has fleur-de-lis...all of the other specials that i've seen also have externally routed cables and are built of SL tubing...mine sports an internal rear brake cable and is built from SLX. just curious if there is a reason for these differences. the serial number is 71516.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...o/IMG_8347.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...o/IMG_8348.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...o/IMG_8349.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...o/IMG_8350.jpg

I don;t know about the cut outs or the cable routing (but I suspect it might be either
a custom build or different age than the ones you've seen).
I do know that that is one gorgeous bike. . .

And welcome to C&V (cranky&vintage), and please don't stay in lurker mode.

Marty

Not all Marinoni's have maple leaf pantos, my special just uses a "M" panto on the lug. Nice looking ride...

thanks and thanks! i do thoroughly enjoy this bike...it's along the lines of what i grew up lusting after as a kid.

yes...the fork is something that i had hanging around. i still have the original, but wanted to tighten up the handling a bit and couldn't see installing a carbon fork.

As suggested by Lotek, Marinoni did a lot of custom work, which would explain the differences. Normally for an SLX frame of this vintage, I would have expected a braze-on front derailleur mount and M cut-outs. The internal cable routing for the rear brake would have been standard. Nice bicycle.

Wow! I have never seen or heard of a Marinoni from this era (1987?) that had fleur-de-lis... only ones I have seen are very early models (75/76)... following that Marinoni used maple leaves into the very early 80s.. Not sure which year that ended but I have an 81 with them. Then as most have said the M cutout was used with marinoni in script on the seat stay caps for the specials and a plain old M on the caps of the lesser models (non-special). Around 1990 they did away with the seatstay caps and transitioned the stays right into the seat lug which was a very elegant design also. I would love to see that bike with the original fork, I never liked those straight colnago jobs.

EDIT: BTW T-mar is the expert.. I have had 5 lugged steel marinonis pass through my hands at one time or another, I am down to 3... I have looked at a lot of them online though. I was at the track yesterday and they still make a nice bike but the all the aluminum pistas had none of the character my 81 Pista has (IMHO). If you email marinoni they will tell you whatever they have on file. I had a generic tre-tubi decal on one I picked up and was pleased to find out it had an SP main frame and the rest was cromor... so much for tre-tubi!

lots of interesting info. i'll admit that the straight blade forks are not for all...but do think the chrome counters the inelegant lack of curves.

i do have an "M" cutout on my BB shell...but perhaps the fleur-de-lis lugs were the only thing on hand at the time (doubtful).

would the omission of a front derailleur hanger denote the need for flexibility in component choice? i do know the original owner did compete and the bike was built with a mix of 105 and 600.

My 1992 special was a competition bike with 600/ultegra group... Your bike may have had special details because it was ordered by a local racer or someone in a shop that had a long standing relationship as a marinoni dealer. Marinoni is far less exclusive these days... but perhaps the original owner was from Quebec and requested the fleur-de-lis... I for one would love to have a fleur-de-lis marinoni. I hope to have small marinoni collection some day, right now 3 is pretty good.