Bought this at the swap meet last weekend on a whim. I really don't need another project right now, but it seemed pretty interesting.

- It looks like it had some new stuff brazed on before a repaint, the downtube shifter boxes look untreated.

- Campagnolo dropouts, Haden bottom bracket cable guides

- The bottom bracket has a 6 digit number and what looks like "EO" stamped in a triangle.

- The seatpost clamp looks out of place

- 126mm rear spacing (although that could have been changed)

- I had a 27" rear wheel with a 1 1/4" pasela, so I put that in and it had 8mm or so of clearance below the rear brake mount/bridge

Anybody have any idea what this is?

Hmm, don't know. Maybe American?

I think "British" but no idea beyond that...looks pretty nice!
27.2 seatpost?

Yep, thanks for reminding me. It takes a 27.2 seatpost.

Wasn't there some discussion in a recent Gitane thread about the 'willow leaf' seatstay attachment? It's probably just my failing brain, but when I looked at the pic of the bb shell for a bit the word 'paliimpsest' jumped out of some dark recess. Across the center of the shell, it appears to me there are traces of some previous etching--does anyone else see what appears to be a capital letter R just to the left of center, or can I expect to see an image of some saintly figure in my bowl of cereal in the morning?

Check the pics and discussion in this thread. That Campione looks pretty similar. There have been previous threads here mentioning similar details on the bb shell stamping.

https://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=149403

Nice. That has several similarities. Maybe the braze-ons are original after all and the shifter mounts just look like that because it was blasted before the paint job.

Not a whole lot of info out there on Campione bicycles, but searching on the "EO in a diamond" bottom bracket stamp seems to turn up a lot of posts about verified Holdsworths with this stamp.

It seems to share some similarities with the Holdsworth Elan model (even the paint color, although it's obviously not original).

Does anyone know the name of the head-tube lug style?

Holdsworth Elan info:

https://www.nkilgariff.com/HoldsModelPages/Elan.htm



Looks pretty similar?

Edit: haven't seen a year that has the over-the-bracket cable guides or the rear-stay rack mounts, maybe some of those were added or modified?

Sorry to keep bumping my post, but I think it may be closer to a Holdsworth Mistral. This one shares the over-the-bracket cable guides and the headtube lugs:

well, there's some interesting clues to follow here, but I'm not getting anywhere!
The headlugs appear to be Prugnat (I use "appear" cause they seem a little crude, but could be my imagination) and they are some Prugnats that Holdsworth used a LOT, but so did lots of other builders.
The BB shell I don't recognize: I have actually asked about one before with the EO (or is it OE?) stamping, but never got an answer that stuck in my head...if it's OE then Oscar Egg is a possibility...but can't find pics of any Oscar Egg BB shell to confirm.
Certainly are some things that lead to "Holdsworth" but that Haden guide does NOT (since Holdsworthy was the Campagnolo importer for the UK) and the stay caps aren't an exact match to a Holdsworth model I'm familiar with...very likely the bosses on the seatstays are add-ons, so no clue there.
Could be Holdsworth, but maybe some other Brit.

EDIT: BTW, Is it me or do you just get the main page and ZERO catalog links when you visit the NKilgariff site? I'm stymied, and would hate to lose his very valuable resource...is it a browser issue?

Edit 2: it's a browser issue...

OK, I've been intrigued by this as well and have seen a couple references stating the EO in a diamond stamp to be that of Eisho, a Japanese part maker. Also a reference the same bb shell was used on some Claude Butlers. I'm attaching a few Holdsworh Mistral photos from my collection, also one that was modified by having 700C canti bosses added.

Interesting, thanks for posting those, I've been having trouble finding close-up pictures of the seat stays and lug work on the Mistral models.

Do you know what year that is, or what the serial number is? It's hard to tell from that photo, but are the seat stay caps flat or tapered toward the top tube?

Here's a shot of mine, which looks almost identical although the caps may be a little more tapered. It could just be a year thing since the tops of the Elan image below that from 1981 look to be finished the same. The gray Mistral frame above was also a 1981, but I couldn't find any closeups of it.





The lugs, seat stay cluster, serial number format and location, and EO stamp all make my believe that it's a Holdsworth Mistral frame within a few years of 1981. The Haden guides are still kind of a mystery, so I suppose it's still possible that it was another British builder.

Edit: it also uses the same round brake mount on the rear brake bridge that I've seen on several other Holdsworth Mistrals, not sure if this was used by many other builders or not.

My first thought was Holdsworth serial number is In The right location and also has the EO in the diamond which mine has also same bb shell but EO may be the maker of the part also uses the same lugs BUT! The stay crimping does not look like 70s Holdsworth to me mine uses flattened spots but I have seen later Claud butlers with that same stay crimping and Holdsworth owned them after they went under in the late 50s? So it very well could be a later Holdsworth or a holdsworthsy BUILT Butler or one of the slew of other names they purchased

also for comparison my mistral from 75 is 0(maybe)30418

Do you have a picture of the stay crimping on yours? I looked at my pictures, and you can't see it in them, but the inside of the stays have flat spots for tire clearance. The outside appears to be different though with the deeper concave crimping.

I'm coming around to agreement that this is a Holdsworth (probably a Mistral) that may have had a few brazed-on additions. I'm still not sure about who made that BB shell: the only Eisho shells I've seen were investment-cast and had a different logo (capital E with a double-stamped S, for Eisho [B]Seisakusho[/B, no O, no diamond]) and had different sockets to this "EO" unit and a pattern of "milled" ovals in the casting similar to the Hitachi and Takahashi shells.
I am convinced that Holdsworthy did use the EO shell in the early '80s, so it's a good clue...the chainstay crimping bothered me, but...

No photos of mine unfortunately but he's one on Craigslist that I've been eyeballing for a while that's very close to mine
https://minneapolis.craigslist.org/ra...656577015.html

you can see what I meant with the difference in chainstay treatment this one is more flatted and yours is more "scooped out" and you can also see the difference in seat stay caps yours are a bit shorter which could have varied by year like someone else had mentioned

Could be British: I think the cable guides are from Haden, a British company.

Did some more digging and it appears to be an even closer match to this Holdsworth-built 82 Claud Butler Dalesman, which is apparently the Claud-Butler equivalent of the Mistral.

Can't find any large pictures of an 82 or 83 mistral, but this matches the rear rack seat stay brazeons and the cable stop on the chain stay. Can't see the bottom bracket cable guides, but it does have them, and the mistral looks like it went to under the bottom bracket routing around or before this time.

I'll buy that for a dollar...even has the rack bosses on the seat stays and the "granny gear" sprocket could explain why the chainstay is crimped where it is.

Following up on one loose thread: I just saw some pics of a San Rensho frame for sale on CL in Camarillo, CA, and it has a BB shell with "EO" in a diamond with the word "Medalist". I'm inclined to believe it's an Eisho product as 23skidoo has said.