HI . ive been surfing the bay again .
The search for " De Rosa " brought up a few search resutls .
BUT i have found what appears to be a Cinelli under " a believed to be a De Rosa " .
it has a few features that say Cinelli to me . but one thing that is throwing me off are the rack bolts on the seat stays but no brazeons on the rear drops .
also the fork .it doesnt seem to fit the frame style , possible different year ?!
anyway if you want to see it ,the link is below
LINK HERE

Anyone Cinelli masters that can shed some light on this ?
is it wishful thinking to say this could possibly be a Cinelli , if not . then what is it ?

Cheers
T

I saw that this morning.

Not a Cinelli or De Rosa. I think this one has come up before. Swiss or French maybe?

Ask the seller if there is a big "R" cut-out on the bottom bracket shell. It might be a Raysport. But modified with the braze-on's.

The seller pulled it. Shame - I was considering taking a chance on it.

Not Cinelli--wrong seat cluster, wrong fork bend, and no stiffening tangs on the fork. And not DeRosa--wrong everything, except, of course, the cutouts.

The fastback seat cluster, "stock" Reynolds fork bend, domed fork and stay ends, and fine workmanship suggest a small US or UK builder. The work is too nice but idiosyncratic for it to be French--the best French bikes were very conventional-looking. The convergence of vertical dropouts, brazed on cable guides, bottle and lever bosses, and lugged construction suggest it was built in the 1980s. I've seen this style of work on Witcomb (US and UK), Roberts, Condor, and Eisentraut. Not to imply that this frame was built by one of these, but these builders were influential or representative of a style.

If it had an R cutout in the bottom bracket, the seller wouldn't be entertaining the idea it might be a DeRosa. And yes, the screw holes on the seat stays are curious. Looks like a nice frame

"The seller ended this listing early because of an error in the listing."


Perhaps they will correct the error and relist it. My guesses are either they set the starting bid too low or they read your comments here and are modifying the desccription.

I'm glad I finally clicked on the link. That frame is almost identical to the first frame I ever built. And when i say that, I mean the lugs and all of the fittings. I didn't really remember what the fork was like, I seem to have gotten rid of it, but seeing this reminded me. I wish I had pictures to post for you. I really don't remember where I got the parts, but I'm pretty sure it was from Proteus. I think they may have had kits, and this may have been one of the kits. I don't think I had all the braze-ons that this frame has. I just had my hands on the frame yesterday. It has never been assembled and it is almost 35 years old.

The frame may well be a Proteus, but it may well be a homebuilt. I'd worry a little about the fork, that isn't an easy joint to braze properly. Most of the Proteus built frames that I saw are very similar. One aspect is the seat cluster. It was like a fastback, but the stays went alongside the seat lug. I don't know that they ever made a frame like this.

You are giving ebay seller's way too much credit there

I'm almost positive this bike was built in the mid-70s. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that because of the reasons in my other post. But it has the narrow Reynolds fork blades that really went out of style in the mid-'70s. Vertical dropouts were in style in the mid-70s, but went back out of style when Campy introduced the short horizontal dropouts (1010b). By the time vertical dropouts were common again, the fork blades would have been fatter.

Since it is in Virginia Beach, I may even know the person who built it, but I don't remember his name. He was a fairly good bike racer. He had a very nice lugless frame that I'm pretty sure he built. He anodized his own parts, and did a very nice job of it.


The seller is just spamming the search engine. The braze ons on the seat stays are for a rack, the way this builds up, the seatstays are very close to each other. The Campy vertical dropouts didn't have eyelets, they were considered a racing dropout. You could get a large washer/nut that would fit through the triangular cutout in the dropout for a rack. I have some in the original packaging. It was not at all common to braze rack eyelets on at that time. I often see brazeons cited as a reason why a frame couldn't be from the '70s. There are two things that were not common before the very late '70s and early '80s. One is that it was rare to see brazeons for two water bottle cages -- I have no idea what we were thinking about that. The other is accommodations under the bottom bracket for the cables. It was also fairly rare to see brake cables through the top tube, but some builders were definitely doing that in the '70s and possibly earlier.

Being a young traditionalist in the mid-70s, I tended to dismiss radical ideas such as vertical dropouts. But since you brought it up, I seem to recall them occurring in some of the criterium designs by Tanguy and even Ben Serotta. They may have fallen into disuse because of the renewed interest in traditional (and mostly Italian) road frames just as much as the 1010b dropouts. I can remember when a lot of the big guns were riding some pretty far out stuff in 1974-75, and then in 1976 everybody started showing up on Colnagos, Gioses, and California Masis.

As for skinny, hooky fork blades, they were indeed falling out of fashion but still plentiful by the late 70s. By this time Reynolds also started producing a blade that was beginning to resemble the stout, gracefully curved Columbus blades we all lusted for. This period still produced plenty of experiments and anachronisms among North American and British builders, so your mid-70s estimate is at least as plausible as my 80s.

I think we can agree, though, that this bike is positively not Italian or French.

I think it looks "American", too...not badly built from the look of it, and yes: idiosyncratic.

relisted here

https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=320324821943

as a Cinelli Super Corsa

In general, there are no signs of this guy being a jerk. 347 positive fbs.

Mike

well, fwiw, I don't believe that it is an SC...apparently neither does the seller, with that BIN!

It's no more a Cinrlli today, than it was a De Rosa last week.

British or American, looks resprayed, so the braze on rack mounts on the seat stays might not be original.

As to what it is, who knows, its gone through cosmetic surgery, and its identity has been erased, perhaps a witness protection program.

I guess I'm the only one that convinced myself