an annoyed seller wrote:
>Sent: Jul 26, 2006 1:52 PM
>To: sandranian@yahoo.com, chasds@mindspring.com, classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
>Subject: Colnago on Craig's list, seller responds....
>
><< Dale, I removed the ad as there were too many replies of nonsense
>questions. As for the mediocre paint, that's life. It is keeping the
>rust at bay. And the super record front d may have been switched at the
>set up after the paint job. The rest of the points from the "expert
<snipped>
**********
This can all be resolved fairly easily. If someone here wants to try it.
Just have the seller take some nice, clean shots of the other side of the pantographed shift-levers. If they're the older style levers, I'll go quietly, even though that style of milling isn't really correct for that frame. I'll eat my crow, if there is crow to eat here.
More likely, the levers are the later Super Record, 1978-1980 at the earliest, and not period-correct for the frame.
I find the notion that a Colnago show bike would not have the usual full-chrome treatment of the era...or at LEAST a chromed crown...completely implausible, but I guess it's possible. Anything's possible with a colnago.
In my experience, it was unusual to see even just a stock Colnago, no fancy parts, with a painted crown..but there probably were some. Any eyewitnesses here?
The paint-job still sucks, although it could be made more appealing with chrome-yellow fill in all the usual places. Not hard to do yourself. It's still not original, alas, and that really reduces the value, not to say the intrinsic interest, of the bike. If the paint-job had been done with at least some eye to period authenticity, it might be more appealing.
As for the chainring, I think it's not period-correct for the frame, but a frame of this style could have ended up with this ring, esp. if it was the end of the model year, or the beginning of a new model year, and old frames were getting built with slightly newer parts. I'd rather see this frame with the drilled rings, or the ring with the Colnago flower only, and the milled ovals. That's just me though.
As it is... not my thing, anyway.
Colnagos of this vintage are increasingly hard to find though--in any condition at all--so if you could get it for cheap, it would make a nice rider, if dolled-up a little.
Charles "dissonant 'nagos give me a headache" Andrews SoCal