I have received numerous and incredibly helpful suggestions about my 27.2 seatpost that won't fit into a circa 1970 Pogliaghi, suggestions for which I am very grateful. I took the frame down to Joe Bell well over a year ago. He held it up high in the air and exclaimed real loud, "Dude, you've got a bike!" We looked inside the front tube and saw that it was Columbus tubing. I assembled the parts from various places and assumed the seat tube was 27.2--until yesterday, that is, when I tried to insert my NOS Campy 27.2. I have since then taken it in to several shops, including local Harry Havnoonian, and Harry himself tells me he thinks I need a 27.0. So, I will head into Philly at the end of the week and try a 27.0, but only after measuring carefully with calipers. (My crude plastic home calipers are not really up to the task). So, thank you all for your formidable collective wisdom which makes the bike even sweeter, and it is a thing of beauty to behold.
Howard Bloch Swarthmore, PA howard.bloch@yale.edu
There have been numerous good suggestions about the ill-fitting Pog post, but the best is to accurately measure the inside diameter of the seat tube FIRST.
However, the question about the 27.2 post not fitting in the Pogliaghi raises the bigger issue of what tubing frames are really built with. I ran into something very similar recently when I built up a Chesini I wanted to sell at the Cirque (but didn't). The frame is a Chesini Olimpiade model, with nice little details of the five Olympic rings cast or cut in the lugs, top eyes, fork crown and head tube. It's probably from the early 80's and, in general - and other than the Olympic details, the frame looks like many mid-line Italian frames of the era, with a Columbus (SL) sticker on the seat tube. I've had the frame for quite a few years, and had collected a complete NOS Gipiemme Spring group for it, including a nice 27.2 Gipiemme Sprint seat post. I never though about measuring the seat tube, just assuming it was 27.2 like the other gazillion similar Italian frames. In my customary fashion, I mounted the chosen saddle to the seat post and tried to insert it into the frame. When it didn't seem to fit, I assumed (you can see now where assuming gets you) that the seat tube was ovalized a bit, or slightly bent at the clamp flange. After checking all that, and even honing out the tube, I was still trying to force the post into the tube, with little success. Only then did it dawn on me to pull out the calipers and check the size of the damn thing! Well, the seat tube measured 26.4. I scrounged around in my parts bins and fount a suitable (but not NOS) Campy Record post in 26.4, which fit just fine, thank-you-very-much.
Now how many Columbus SL frames have you seen that take a 26.4 post, especially Italian one's of this era? Which begs the question, does this frame really have a Columbus SL seat tube?
As I touched on in an earlier post about Reynolds 753, and tube-type stickers on frames, not everything is always as it seems in the vintage bike world. Tubing stickers were very much a selling point in frames of the era. However, I wonder how much substitution went on, and for what reasons. Custom frames, obviously, often had a mix of tubes to suit the owner, but often maybe just the builder's idea of what was appropriate to the builder's "vision" at the time. My Stan Pike is a classic (no pun intended) example. The frame was built in '83, but as a "stock" rather than custom-for-client frame, and sports Reynolds 531 SL stickers on the seat tube and fork blades. You might think, cool, a full 531 SL frame, which is pretty much what I thought when I first got the frame. Later, when I was able to obtain the original documentation from the builder's son, Steve Pike, I learned a lesson on perception and reality. The original build sheet for my Stan Pike frame indicates that the top tube, seat tube and head tube are Reynolds, the fork Columbus, and the down tube, seat-stays and chain-stays SV (Super Vitus, I presume). Quite a mix of tubes there. And the seat tube takes a 27.2 post!
Just goes to show that you just never know what oddities you might find in this classic bike universe.