RVL's Ugly Ducklings

Will it beat the bobrat though?

That's a tough gig, the bob rat was quite unique...

things are moving though.
The pink fork came up ok with some emery-cloth and rattlecan clearcoat - they certainly look structurally sound and the cinelli-ish crown is quite attractive... here are a couple of details:

I've beefed up the frugality and started using Wilkinson's rattle-can-clear-coat at £3.99 - Half the price of Halfords. #marginalgains

Seems to go on OK though

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Next step then is to pull off all the flaky paint, polish up the bare metal, clean the remaining paint and clearcoat over everything.
That's quite enough for one day, tomorrow I'll try and sort out a headset and fit it.

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Starting to look pretty good I think

Yes it is! These forks suit the frame nicely..

Nice to see this thread coming back. Chapeau from a fellow olmo owner :) @anidel might have some olmo goodies like bar plugs etc

I actually have some nice parts that would look better here than on mine!
Got a pantoed chainring, seatpost and stem.

Here they are.

I might keep this stem and sell the longer one I have on my Olmo

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Thanks @agusteed & @Sig_Arlecchino

I have some unfinished business with 90's Italian steel.... To my shame I brazed track ends (very badly) onto a '90's Moser back in 2004...

The Moser was my old Cotswold league race bike and was very similar (red, concealed cabling, chrome fork of similar pattern etc)
To this day I regret that "mod" so I'm trying to work through that shame by building this!!!!

The Aelle frame is surprisingly light - lighter than the Oria on my Moser - but the paint is pretty poor - I vaguely recall other Olmos that shedded paint like this even when relatively new.

Got a Moser in Aelle if you're interested :-p
That's quite light and actually responsive indeed. I think Aelle is underestimated.

To my shame I brazed track ends

don't be too hard on yourself, at least you didn't bolt them on ;)

p.s. Aelle is 26,2 seattube iirc, so the panto seatpost won't be an option. Just saying.

Ooh - I'd certainly be interested in the long stem....
It's about right period wise - keep me posted

I'm going to be running a more contemporary set-up (105 octalink) so the chainring is not going to work - not sure about seatpost, also probably a bit too oldschool (not to mention posh and exotic) - I'm sure it belongs on a fancier build than this!

Got a Moser in Aelle if you're interested :-p

haha - I'm on a one-in-one-out policy and my De Rosa's going nowhere!
I'm looking forward to riding this, it'll be a change from my Duratec tarckbike

good point

Good point and it's 26.8 for Aelle

Preach!

Ah, one of my favourite threads up & running again!

Look forward to seeing more of this! Keep the updates comming.

Any tips for cleaning up flakey paint and polishing the bare metal? My Donohue could do with a similar treatment!

I use one of those wire brush wheels on a grinder for the rusty bits - they're not as aggressive as they look.

for fiddly bits I use scrunched up bits of aluminium foil or thin strips of emery cloth

If I want a really good polish on the exposed bits I then use super-fine emery cloth, and a once-over with Autosol.

Degrease with a solvent of your choice - I use car brake cleaner and then clear-coat

@smac @russmeyer @dazzrie
Thanks, it's been a while since I fiddled about with bikes, but I'm enjoying it....

I picked up this headset last week from @gav
Period correct and in need of a good clean

It's a decent quality needle roller assembly marked "Apollo" - clearly not Halfords but I've never heard of them - all I could find on google image search was a steel version on PedalPedlar and even that was a ghost link

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Cheers! I'll give that a punt.

Didn't get much done today, just cleaned up the headset - here's a before and after of the top nut

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