You are reading a single comment by @WimVDD and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@WimVDD
I'm a child of 1973, never was allowed to go cycling (as a sport) and when I became officially an adult (age 18) I told my parents to * off, plundered my savings account and bought a bike. That was 1991.
My first bike was a Scott Windriver mountainbike but my real heroes were the guys that passed by my parental house every year in April: the road pro's riding the Tour of Flanders.
I remember Moreno Argentin escaping in our street (and winning the Tour of Flanders) and this resulted -many years after- in my first vintage bike: a Colnago Master "Ariosteia".
And that was only the beginning... A second one followed soon after (a 1992 Carrera Tassoni team replica) and not a week went by without checking out the local second-hand sites.
And that is where I found this one.
It looked like a Panasonic but gosh, how mutulated was this one! I didn't know much about Panasonic bikes so I started searching the web and found out Panasonic bikes had BB shells with the brand stamped in it. I asked the seller to send me some photos from the BB shell and so he did.
Okay, it was a real Panasonic, that was clear. But as I wanted to know what type it was, I asked him for some serial numbers. He was very patient and answered my mail with another photo.
Damned, this didn't follow the serial number pattern I found on the web. Disappointed I was...
But than I found this very particular site where someone talked about his accidentally found ex-pro bike and I read these bikes didn't follow this pattern but had a different set of numbers: riders's initials-bike number-year. So this was the 3rd frame of a 1991 pro rider with the initials MO...
Hurray!! It was a former team bike we were talking about! I started looking for the 1991 team riders list and found out MO could stand for Mark van Orsouw, a Dutch rider. Another internet search learned this was the man: