I posted a note to the Pay it Forward thread about a Soviet era tubular. I got a question back about that, and figured a better place to discuss details of the bike, even though it was just about a tubular I was trying to give away, was a new thread. So, here goes...

I've no idea. The story I heard about the bike was that an older Polish gentleman had owned it for a long while, having purchased it from a former member of the Polish national team. When he could no longer ride it he traded it to the bike shop I got it from for something he could ride.

It had a mixture of parts on it. Very nice Campy stuff - first gen SR rear derailleur, brake levers and calipers with no road or wall rash to speak of, but no-name bottom bracket, dropouts, and chainring bolts, which I took to be of Eastern European origin. The crank arms are Campy Record (again, in fine shape), but the rings are Galli. (In the pix of the chainring bolts note that the bits of metal shaved off to make the hex fitting are still hanging on inside.) Also, interesting cable end treatment on the derailleur cables. There's no blob soldered on the end. Instead, the end appears to be swaged (is that the right term?), then soldered to hold its shape. See the Picasa album I put up about the bike.

Oh, one other thing. The fork was pretty clearly not straight. Note the extra "divot" in the right-hand fork end, probably done to line up the axle.

Skip

COol find !!! THanks for the thread !

One other thing I remembered. Somewhere, probably here or on Classic Rendevzvous, I heard that the Eastern European teams, always lacking hard currency, would bring stuff they could barter when they came to Western Europe to race. That probably included lots of those Soviet tubulars. Ah, here's a quote from Curtis Odom on CR last October:

Quote:

A very familiar tire in the 70's. This were brought into the states by USSR riders racing invitational tours in the US, Canada, and Mexico. The story was they were sent to races with no usable currency but heaps of these tires that they would then sell really cheap to buy food and proper racing tires. I remember these being common as dirt for around $5-$10 each.

USSR is usually for export items.

Very interesting bike, Skip.