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@Scilly.Suffolk
A couple of years ago I bought an Ian May badged, early Nineties racer off Ebay for £100.
Not much information available about the man himself: he had a shop on the Wirral, a reputation as an "experimental" framebuilder and he died relatively young.
You may still find the number for his shop listed: please don't ring it, the number now belongs to a very patient lady and the shop is definitely closed (earlier enquires caused a spate of calls to her).
It came with a mishmash of low-end parts typical of the period which seemed to be OE: Maillard hubs (dated 1991) laced to Rigida rims, a Tracer chainset, Ofmega front and Simplex rear derailleur, Taiwanese callipers and Modolo levers, Gippiemme shifters etc etc.
So far, so what?
The surprise was that the lugged frame is built from oval tubes, in a round-oval-round profile: not too common. I've ruled-out Reynolds Speedstream as this was for lugless builds; I've ruled-out Columbus Max as this was oval throughout it's length and used oval lugs; I've ruled-out Columbus Air as this was teardrop in profile.
As already mentioned, Ian had a reputation for being Experimental, so my best guess now is that he had a local engineering firm shape the tubes for him. However, it has an Italian BB and I've just discovered that the internal diameter of the crown race is 27.0mm, so that too is Italian (or possibly JIS).
It seems odd that Ian would have had a tubeset formed and then built it to Italian standards; more likely that this was built in Italy and badged for sale in his shop, which brings us back to the question of the tubes.
The dropouts are not named and there are no markings on the bottom bracket, steerer or anywhere else that I can see. All in all, I'm foxed: the frame isn't run-of-the-mill, but the paint is poor (lacquer runs everywhere) and the OE was modest at best.
Any thoughts? Photos here.
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