Somec - Società Meccanica enthusiasts

Well I didn't die cycling across town with brakes wired the wrong way and the Delta's were fine, nowhere near as bad as I was expecting having only ever read about them before.

As a lover of Columbus Max, Italian bikes and wild 80's and 90's paint jobs this is pretty much a grail bike for me, and condition on it is frankly amazing for what is approx 30 years old. Previous owner said he has had it 4 years and has ridden it on 1 event in that time, and clearly whoever had it before him barely rode it either. I spent 2 hours on the train back to London just staring at it. The groupset shows signs of use, but apart from a tiny tiny scratch on the paint in the logo on the top tube I cannot see a single blemish, or mark on the paint at all anywhere. Admittedly its hard to judge on a frame that makes me feel like I've just dropped some acid when all I had was a coffee.

Same paint scheme as @hacha 's on page 1, I'm hoping its a Mario Martini paintjob, certainly looks like his work, but I still love it even if it isn't one of his. The previous owner said he was told it may have been a show bike or a demo or shop bike, he was clear to say he had no evidence of this and it could easily be a cycling fairytale. Weirdly there's no fancy tulip cut outs on the bottom bracket, and the paintjob makes it hard to read anything stamped on the shell, but I can only see L, which I guess must be large, and maybe a very feint 2 and maybe a 4 or 7 but they are much less visible, my middle aged eyes can't make it out anyway, even zooming on the computer.

From reading this thread it sounds like Somec are really good at replying to questions about their old bikes, so I'll fire off an email to Lara tomorrow in the hope she can confirm year, if its a Mario paintjob, and any other info about the frame.

And finally as this is full on era of Campag pursuing form over function, the bike also came with those super early Campag pedals, that along with the Delta's always seem to feature in 'not very good ideas at the time or now' articles. Apparently the cleats had the consistency of mushy peas and quickly disintegrated making clipping in impossible, and they had a funky ratchet in which was to help keep the pedals the right way up for clipping in, but when this ratchet wears out the opposite happens are they are permanently facing the other way making clipping in a bloody nightmare. And they weigh a bloody ton. Again I've only ever read about all this, and as I was given some cleats with the bike, I'm at least going to give them a go and see. These ones look like new so they seem to work fine for now at least, and in keeping with theme of the bike as is, hush about the function, look at the shiny!

And onto the groupset, holy cow its only full panto C-record 8 speed. I've got a 7 speed with a screw on cassette bike, and all my others are 10 speed so this 8 speed is all new to me. When I first saw bike with the panto groupset I thought it looked like it should have panto downtube shifters and panto levers, but the shifters and rear mech are first Gen Record which dates from about 92/93 which fits in with approx date of frame. They feel crisp and good as new but the rubber hoods were wandering about all over the place while I was riding, don't know if that was a thing on these and if there's an old school hack for that, or maybe its just they are 30 year old hoods and some new ones won't be so floppy.

This is how it came to me, so don't worry, right now I can confirm that bar tape is going, those bars are going, those 23mm tyres are going, apparently the Delta's have a notch in so you can move them up, so I'm hoping I can at least get some 25c tyres in there, anyone know if Delta's ever been made to run over 28c?.Also losing that laughable max 21 tooth rear cassette too. My flouro pink Tomassini has white tape and saddle and so this is going to have black tape and saddle. The frame and group set are doing quite enough shouting without the need for anything for the tape. So that's all I have planned for it for now, and maybe change the pedals and brakes if they turn out to be as bad as everyone says long term, but for now I'm keeping them as they so pretty.

Pardon the kid on Christmas morning excitement, that's enough of me waffling, show the people the shiny FFS! So here it is, approx 1992/93 tig welded Columbas Max Somec, and I love it already. Sorry for phone pics, just managed to grab them before the light faded.


forks have different paint colours on the other side!













EDIT: got a better pic of the BB, and can clearly see it has L and numbers 443, so maybe the 44th frame built in 93? Time to break out google translate Italian and compose a mail for Lara in Lugo to open tomorrow morning.

Hands down the rowdiest bike I'm ever likely to own.