Coming Sunday the Stalen Ros will be held in Gent in Belgium.
Stalen Ros België 2014 in het teken van Campagnolo
Valentino Campagnolo will be coming.
Is anyone going?

Can't make it, but I'm looking forward to the pics/reports.

I'll be there. Need to find a way to smuggle the piggy bank out of the house, though.

get there on a low trail bike with a handlebag bar up front, the weight of the coins in the piggy bank will balance out the trail!

Gas prices are dropping, but 700km in a PRV engine Volvo is still pretty expensive... I am afraid I am not going.

Would be a sweet drive with a PRV. I'm going anyway, so if you want to listen to a 4.7L PowerTech for a change, you're welcome to hop aboard. Same goes for [MENTION=108057]paulkal[/MENTION] of course. Just let me know.

Carpooling sounds like a grand idea. Unfortunately I have to be present in a different velodrome for my certificate exam...

Good luck with the exam! It's nice to be a certified person.

Certified of not, I'm missing out on a nice get together!

Carpooling sounds nice, only later I will meet some friends in Antwerp. So I have to go with my own car and listen to some music by Beethoven.

No problem. Can't hope to compete with Beethoven. Chuck Berry is as close as you will get to him in my automobile. See you there!

How was the show? I wish I could have been there. Any nice stuff you came home with?

Yes, we are all very curious to hear and see your findings at 't Kuipke! Did you make any pics, any purchase?

It was a great day. I met up with fellow forumites paulkal and stevenc and some more friends from the local C&V scene. Watched Valentino Campagnolo being grilled by a journalist ("Why doesn't Campagnolo make a competitor for the truly excellent Shimano 105 group?"). Apparently labour costs in Europe are high and Campy doesn't have the R&D budget to compete with Shimano on all levels.

Bikes:



People:



145 kph Schauff tandem:



Valentino:




Among the bikes in the show was an almost exact copy of my L'Express. Until recently I'd assumed mine was from the early seventies, and found it a little hard to believe when another L'Express owner told me that they stopped building these in 1960, but now this one was presented as a 1955 example, and I'm beginning to think he may have been right:



I came home with a whole bunch of assorted goodies (TA Cyclotouriste crank set, set of Weinmann cantilevers, Pivo stem), but the most interesting buy was this frame. I'd managed to control myself in the morning, pass it by three times and refrain from asking the price, and hoping it wouldn't be my size anyway, but when it was still there after lunch and the seller had stuck on a tag with a reasonable price, I couldn't resist anymore and got out my tape measure: 62 cm. Perfect. Dang! The seller also had the TA crank set for sale and offered a discount if I took both. I succumbed.

It is labeled "Toortelboom Sport" and "Fr Toortelboom", with an address in Middelburg, Belgium. It's a typical Belgian frame: the chrome socks are actually painted, not chromed.

Thanks for the report. It looks like I definitely missed out on great day.

Excellent score by the way, that frame sure looks the part: sixties white & purple with the decorative stay caps and fork crown

It was a fun day, met some friends, some nice bikes and parts. [MENTION=173992]non-fixie[/MENTION], that is a nice looking frame.

Those are some great photos, thanks for sharing. I find the interview with Campagnolo intriguing, do you happen to know which site/newspaper the journalist represented? This must be a pretty big event if Mr. Campagnolo showed up...

Thanks, guys. I've been cleaning and generally fondling it all of yesterday evening. Raised some eyebrows in the non-fixie household. I think I'm in love with it.

This is the crank set that was part of the deal with the seller. He told me it actually came off this bike. A 52/42/36 (why a 36 and not smaller?) triple. I may put it back on.

You're welcome. I'm sure the background of the interviewer was mentioned, but my limited memory capacity is apparently reserved for other stuff. I'll see if I can find the answer to that. In the meantime, there's an FB page with some info.

BTW, when the interviewer said he had more 'critical questions', mr Campagnolo impressed me by answering with something like "there are no critical questions, just questions that need an intelligent answer". I need to remember that one.

Hi Non-fixie,

I was there and on your first picture you could see the handelbars of the bike I exposed ... at the very very end of the row, level with a saddle since I positionned it the reverse way to stress on the "difference".

I don't agree with the statement of typical Belgian frame.
Of all my Belgian bikes, just one has stays that are painted.

I'd say that the absence of chrome goes with the general built. The cable stop on the last picture is speaking of this. On a sixties frame I would instead expect 2 parts brazed on the stay. A little ring and a stop.
Anyway, I like the color and I'm pleased that you bought it.
I think it had been for sale as a complete bike on a local web site. I asked a question then, given the color and the size, but at that time it was too expensive.

This edition of the StalenRos has been of a very good quality with even more participants than usually.

Too bad I missed this… Thanks for the report and the pics!

Hello, Munny. I'm sorry I missed the chance to meet you in the flesh, I would have have liked that! You're right in that not all Belgian frames have silver-painted fork ends. I should have expressed myself more clearly: I've never seen silver-painted fork ends on any other than Belgian-built bikes. I have a Dutch Jan Janssen with painted socks, but I'm pretty sure it was actually built by Flandria:



The silver paint job on the Toortelboom is much nicer, though, as is the general finish. The seller told me that all the other parts on it were Campagnolo Super Record, so I it's not so surprising he had a high asking price for whole bike.

BTW, Frans Toortelboom was a professional racer between 1966 and 1973. If he started a bike shop after his racing career I guess this was one of his early bikes.

And yes, this edition of Stalen Ros was definitely bigger than last year. However, I did miss some of the older stuff that was on sale then.

If I consider the usual state of the chrome after 50 years of our climate, I have to admit that painted fake chrome is not a bad solution. The paint of your frame is of a very good quality and at the begining of the year, I had one of my cherished frame (Plume Sport, in Brussels), rechromed. A quality work is coming at a price : several hundreds Euro for the same patern.
Given that you don't find chroming shop everywhere, paint was probably a good alternative.

For the Stalen, yes, we should have taken the opportunity to meet.
I met several people over there

What kind of older stuff did you miss ?
The stand of Mr Paul was full of old stuff, as the one of a BMW enthousiast.
I came back with 3 derailleurs, 2 prewars, including an extremelly rare one; a set of nearly new Universal long reach very old, 2 campa NR long reach and even a single NOS Mavic record du monde de l'heure to pair an orphean one. I can't complain.

Wow, you did good! I seem to remember that last year there were one or two traders with lots of NOS parts like handlebar grips, brake lever hoods, brake pads, rear light lenses and all sorts of grub screws and grommets. The sort of stuff you need to really finish a build once you've got the basics sorted.

But I'm not complaining. The stuff I did find was absolutely worth the trip, as was the general atmosphere, meeting some friends and of course the vélodrome 't Kuipke itself.