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I raced it through the naughties and had a load of fun on it
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By about 2008 I had 2 kids at school, had quit racing, rationalised down to just this one bike and was commuting 38miles each way to the Rutherford Labs in Oxfordshire.
The bike got covered in road grit and was cleaned a couple of times a year for the Dragon ride or whatever.
I crashed it in the Tour of Wessex and had to replace the Modolo brifters with Chorus. Eventually the red Hope hub shattered.
I rode the Magnificat on it in 2015 and noticed that the paint had started to bubble in various places and had lifted to reveal white powdery shit.....
I put it back in the shed meaning to investigate, clean it up and get it running nicely again.... In the intervening 5 years I've started (and subsequently left) a business, changed job twice, recovered from cancer, moved house etc - all the while knowing that I bought my dream bike and then ruined it.... -
There's quite a lot of this going on
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and a load more of the usual crap like this ....
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Basically it's a bit of a mess and I'm not sure if it's dead or alive....
I'm going to get some emery cloth out and clear up all the bubbling paint and white aluminium oxide powder so I can see where we are.... not sure what happens after that.
Eventually I plan to rebuild it -
here are a couple of more recent iterations
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I started this afternoon stripping the bike down to see what state we're in...
The first issue was that a spacer had seized onto the steerer so I couldn't remove the stem...
I had to hacksaw it off in the end.
Headset and BB are feeling graunchy, brake cables have seized, one of the downtube cable adjusters broke off when I wsa removing it, both the tyres are shagged and both chainrings are worn out.
All in all a splendid start!!
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love a cream bike! could be time for a respray?
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This certainly makes sense but I'm also feeling impatient to get it back on the road too....
What I think I'll do is strip/expose all the dodgy bits, sand off all the oxide and crap till I reach good shiny metal and then clear-coat the exposed bits.
I'll build it and deal with all the other component-level problems and build it.
Meanwhile I'll be looking for a powder coater and getting a decent colour match so it can be re-coated and restored forever! -
I've just had a look at the Armourtex price list - that escalated quickly!
I'll need to put some feelers out elsewhere and also decide whether to stick with ivory or go for something new...
one problem that's been solved is that you can get Merak sticker sets on ebay though I have a sneaky suspicion they were quite dinky - I'm rather attached to the big loud ones on this frame
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Cheers for the tip, Aurum looks like the one
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I think I'll stick with the same colour (which I estimate to be RAL1013) and get the frame refinished at Aurum.
Meanwhile I'll clear all the nasty bubbly bits, tackle the knackered components and rebuild it as glam-rat -
I've cleaned the wheels, tightened and retrued them, greased the hubs and fitted some new rubber.
I'd forgotten how insanely good these Sonic hubs are
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Just finished polishing up the corroded bits
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Thrust
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fizzy.bleach
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Lolo
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About
De Rosa Al+ recalled to life
Posted by
@Rik_Van_Looy
Back around the turn-of-the-century I was racing Cotswold League (badly) and earning enough to feel like I deserved a dream bike. I bought a DeRosa and built it up with 9spd Chorus and some weird Modolo Brifters...
