1974 De Rosa Pista build

That's a clever way to monitor the process.
Usually I'd just stick 'em in a bucket of drain cleaner (caustic soda)

I tried caustic soda before. That stuff is super strong. Works a little too good, it ate through a Nitto quill stem after I left it for a few minutes too long and the fumes are horrific. Oven pride is slow but thorough so you have room for error and it comes with gloves and a big old ziplock bag.

Frame is done and should be with me next week.

Here are some pictures pre spray regards of Argos

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Wet n dry day tomorrow with the cranks and then polish them up a treat.
Saturday is polish and regrease pedals day.
Then relax until Tuesday when the frame arrives.

Taster

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More like tasty.

proper build thread

good choice of colour

this is lovely!
im in love

Looking forward to seeing this. Proper frame builders.

Bada-fucking-BING

Great colour choice. Was it a custom mixture or a standard offering from Argos?

Number 2. Blu on their chart

Top tip when getting a respray. Don't use cyclomondo decals. They are poor quality and very pixelated. When I contacted him about the pixelation of the decals I received he assured me that they were vector files but his printer was the problem. As a printer of decals he should invest in better hardware.

Anywho, I got mine off bicyclestickers.co.uk and they're perfect.

I tried the oven cleaner trick on an old pair of DA7710's and completely cunted them, so congratulations for getting it right.

I'm better at restoring old enamel badges, if you're interested?

What happened to them and how did you proceed?
I wanted to try it too, but I'd rather first listen to what you did and avoid it :)

The oven cleaner has only half done the job as these are in a pretty bad way. I've got a load of wet n dry and going to give it some elbow grease to make them look good.

Nice job on the Cinelli badge BTW. I'm going to keep mine old looking for the time being.

I left them in there way too long and it ate through the anodising and started on the alloy.
They were very cheap because I bought the right crank separate from the left crank and they were both very tatty... I proceeded by putting them in the spares box were they remain to this day.

A more fool-proof way of doing it is with sandpaper (thick to start with, then progressively finer until 1500 / 2000 grit), lots of elbow grease and Autosol. It's slow but at least it's controlled.

Fair doos. Looking forward to seeing the Argos restoration in full, their attention to detail is fantastic. That De Rosa logo on the top eyes is sooo fucking crisp... Having given it a go myself, I have no idea how they to that.

Looks great. Keen to see the finished frame.

From my experience soak alloy parts in owen cleaner no longer than 2-3 minutes. Removed anodising from 2 stems, worked really well. Just use stop watch and don't leave for cup of tea.
Looking forward to see complete build. :)

Jeezus bloody christ... another great build thread. ou are the chap with the Red Colnago Pista with those massive chrome deep v's? If so, saw you out on it a while back, those rims are not to my kinda thing but was surprised how it all worked together ie looked good!

Just spent all day in the garden wet and dry sanding the cranks to remove the old scratches and pitting. They're not perfect but they'll look great once on the bike. Pretty happy considering I paid £95 for them. Also got some campy crank bolts for them. Might not be period correct but I like them

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yes that was me and my Colnago. No Deep v's on this build though.