So I had planned to drop a load of dosh on the great 80’s Paino road bike I picked up off eBay last weekend. I spent the week concepting and building up a wishlist of great parts. The first part on order was a set of Velocity Deep V wheels in purple (gold spoke nipples of-course lol). I really wanted to offset the old skool frame with some super crazy in your face bling wheels, thing is, Velocity are out of purple rims and that disrupted the whole plan as it gave me time to think some more.
Grant at Mc Cyclery thought it would have been a shame to remove the vintage Campagnolo gear from the bike (I had removed the quick releases and was contemplating a new Sugino crankset). Same goes for the Campagnolo hubs, which he says are worth a pretty penny. After talking to Matt, who says I’m a lucky fucker to score such a lovely bike with great Australian history I re-thought all of the modifications that I was going to do and I’ve decided to just leave her be.
I put the drop bars back on as the risers, apart from being very “trendy” and fixie inspired, brought the bars too close to me in any case. I dropped in to Mc Cyclery again today today and bought some brand new cabling for both brakes and shifters. It’s so nice to not have to tune up the gears, friction shifting rocks out! Grant was out of toe clips so I ducked into Europa Cycles in Kingsford hoping to find some vintage gear.
Europa: I always dreamed of owning a Colnago.
Europa and John have been around forever. I bought my road bike from them when I was a kid, it was a Europa steel frame with friction shifting, lovely bike which I later destroyed (I ran over a cat!). They used to have a huge store on Anzac Parade, close to the big roundabout, they also had a store in Clovelly and on Clarence St. in the city across from Clarence Street Cyclery. I haunted the staff a lot, and even did hours at the Clovelly store in exchange for parts for a mountain bike build.
It’s just so awesome he’s still there, the now tiny “new” shop is a time warp, nothing has changed and John is in the store running it with his wife and his son. He’s an old man now, his hands are a bit shakey but he got a little excited when I said I had an old Paino bike I wanted some parts for. Specifically some white handlebar tape that refects the era, some chrome toe clips and white leather straps. John ducked into the store room out the back, and after what felt like an eternity, he came back out with some goodies for me.
Check out the goodies I bought: French AFA toe clips, Europa/Campagnolo white leather toe straps and vintage handlebar tape. Even the recipt John wrote for me is old skool cool!
– Edit: Love the toe clips and straps, they feel great. The bars I still have to get used to. On a bad note, the handlebar tape was nowhere near long enough for the whole drop bar (it could only do the ends to the brakes) That’s a massive shame. Looks like I’ll have to settle for something else.