celeste barn find
 

I just picked up a Celeste Bianchi for 50 dollars and can't wait to get to restoring it. Until two days ago I didn't even know the first thing about vintage cycling but this site has given me a fast education. I was looking to get back into shape after having a pacemaker/defibrilator installed and mentioned to someone that I wanted to get back into cycling and was looking for a cheap bike. He mentioned he had an old bike in his basement collecting dust that needed some work and this is what I found. Still working on complete identification but from what I can tell it is a sport sx that appears to be completely original except for the tires. So, how'd I do?

You did just fine and my guess is that you will enjoy riding the bicycle.

Welcome to the Bike Forums, a great place to learn about old bicycles.

That certainly is a lucky find .
Thank your friend ,
and enjoy the ride

Hello Welcome to the forums. Looks like a '88 or '89 Sport SX. Does it have Exage Sport or Sport LX? Sport LX would be an '89.

Great first Nuovo Classic to start with. It has all the style of a great classic but the two main "modern" conviences, index shifting and aero brake levers.

http://www.bikeforums.net/attachment...3&d=1334746259

Nice, but the fork...
Just joking, great find and welcome to the forums!

Restoring? Looks practically ready to ride. Maybe you'll want to clean it, repack bearings, and possibly re-cable. I'd say you did pretty darn well!

Forget about the price, a celeste Bianchi road bike is a major score!

Exceptionally "cool" find!

http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2221/5...5821afdd36.jpg

This type of car would fit in well with your "new to you" Bianchi.

Great find.

Ask on here if you have any questions about refurbing it, there are some amazingly knowledgable folks on here who are very forthcoming with advice.

Best of luck with your ongoing recovery. A nice celeste Bianchi is great medicine.

Hey, i think you need to get a better bike, just send it my way for proper disposal :)

What a great find for $50!

It has the entire exage group including the hubs. The bottom bracket is a little notchy but everything else works great. Not sure how I feel about the biopace chainrings though.

Welcome! I had a slightly older version of that bike, and it was excellent. Only mine was red, and unfortunately I paid a lot more than $50.

Congrats on your find! The cycling gods are clearly sending you a message.

Just to state the obvious though in case you aren't already familiar with bicycle sizing - whether or not that particular bike is the right one for you has everything to do with whether it happens to be your size, and much less to do with whether it is a nice bike.

The good news is that if you need to trade for something more fitting that you have an attractive bike to offer.

When I lived in California and then in Germany I was an avid cyclist (my first nice bike was a Schwinn paramount mountain bike) so I'm familiar with the importance of size but I think this one is close enough to work and if it isn't I know its desirable enough to sell.

Great find! I love the Bianchi Blue.

Great find. It's so hard to locate celeste barns these days.

Nice bike, too.

Welcome to what happens when the wiseguys on the Road Forum get old.

I wish we had barns and basements in Australia.

I blame it on too many years of us all riding around on Kangaroos, when people should have been buying bianchis to store away for me to find at a later date :)

Lovely bike, congrats.

Down your way they are called Ihcnaib's

Actually cubtender, i think you might be thinking of New Zealand that is backwards (we have to say that cause they keep beating us in the Rugby).

Downunder it would probably be qıɐuɔɥı

Nice one.

Complete disassembly, cleaning, wheel truing yesterday. Bottom braket adjustment and reassembly this morning. Took it for a little spin around the neighborhood and it glides like silk.

Throw up some pictures of her after her TLC! :)

after a little checkup and a bath.
 

Threw on some crappy pedals until my son gives me back my spd's

That looks great!

Can i interest you in a trade for a good second hand kangaroo:)

Exage? it would be an '88 then, still a great bike. Don't worry too much about he BioPace just ride it a few times and if you don't like it just get some round rings and swapp them out. I think that is a 130 BCD (bolt circle diameter) crank so replacement rings are pretty easy to get.