Mr. Sachs wrote:
> the masi bicycles that were race-ready in the 70s are
useless in today's
> racing environment.
> what's wrong with racing on modern, more worthy stuff,
Not only are they useless because of out-moded parts (Ritchie's right: anybody on a Nuovo Record group bike on a climb, or in a sprint, is gonna get left behind, physical abilities being roughly equal. Even I concede that, and I'm an unregenerate retrogrouch)
Nope. There's a bigger problem. Masi GCs have a geometry that makes them a bit sluggish, esp. in the very Criterium-type races they're named for! If I were going to ride vintage iron with modern parts, I'd re-space a 70s Colnago Super, or an early 80s De Rosa, to name two. Those bikes have a geometry that makes them somewhat more practical in modern racing than the venerable GC....from what I can see (and, admittedly, I haven't measured them exactly), a Masi Special from the early 1960s is essentially the *same bike* as a GC right through to about 1978, or maybe later even. I know that by the 80s the GC started to evolved into a more modern frame, but not until then.
Charles Andrews
SoCal