1990s Pinarello Stelvio restoration

So I bought this seriously abused Pinarello Stelvio for £95 from a Kenyan roadie. The steel frame (Dedacciai Ken's tubing) feels great on the bumpy Nairobi roads, much more comfortable than my alu Tifosi. However it does rattle like crazy as so many parts are loose/broken/worn.

So much is wrong with it, I'm not sure where to start:

• The unhooked rear rim (chromed, stamped RALEIGH ENGLAND, 60s?) doesn't hold my clincher tyre properly, making the wheel feel & sound out of true, i.e. BOOF-BOOF-BOOF.
  
• Brake blocks are stale 70s rectangles, so picking up speed downhill is an irreversible commitment.
  
• STIs are trashed, and the downtube is too fat for band on levers, so they point inwards, cross-eyed.
  
• Paintwork is rather neglected.
  
• Also this bike is blatantly too small for me. I'm 193cm, it's 56cm square. Long stem time!
  
  

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8475/8105235894_6d164798b8_c.jpg

Note the rear reflector. This is hilarious, because riding in the dark in Nairobi is bloody dangerous - I'd want a pickup truck full of armed guards with me, not just a little red reflector.

Note: I made a "Wanted:..." thread a few months ago to gather parts, so you may have seen this before.

The plan
Strip it, repaint it, build it up with mostly Shimano 600, use a bigger stem, ride it around the gorgeous rolling countryside:

http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/27276455.jpg

More posts will follow fairly rapidly.

Wow, fellow hipster in Kenya! I currently live in Kisumu, although I am at home in UK at the moment (ran away due to the elections). Never thought about doing any serious riding out there to honest, roads are just not worth it and I am not willing to go out at night. I have a bike out there but its just a cheap Chinese thing I bought from Tusky's! Will be returning to Kenya on 14th April and passing through Nairobi. Need any parts bringing over?

O hai! We should go and represent at the Kenyan hipster scene in Nairobi. I have no idea where they hang out. Elections were a complete let-down in terms of excitement. One dead policeman and somebody ran over a goat, or something.

I shall jump upon your very generous offer of couriering parts. I'll PM you.

Stripped the frame:

The parts came off easily enough over the weekend.

Note the apparent repair to the drive-side drop out, it's been brazed back after snapping off, and is definitely the original part because it has the PI before the brazing and O afterwards. It seems quite straight too!

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. . . . . .

Finding parts is a non-trivial challenge in Kenya. Most bicycles are Chinese and most wheels are 26". There is no eBay, no KFGSS, no real postal service, no online retailers. All parts sold in shops are either awful Chinese steel, or sub-Deore level Shimano for 3x the UK price. (i.e. 8spd chains are £27). The only way to find stuff is to go to your local bike mechanic and ask him to put the word out that the mzungu (white man) is looking to buy abc & xyz. Then days later you receive a SMS, go on a mission to find some guy and hopefully buy your parts.

The original Shimano 600 parts remaining on the bike are:

• STI levers, shagged, won't change gear
  
• Brakes, a bit iffy,
  
• BB, stiff, probably the only ITA thread BB in the country
  
• Headset, in surprisingly good condition
  
• Chainset, but unoriginal chainrings
  
  

Basically I need to replace everything except the chain set and the brakes, and realistically will need to source them from the west. I managed to order some parts (some from this thread [URL http://www.lfgss.com/thread95354.html] ) and my friend couriered them to me when visiting from the UK. Feels too good to be true to have these precious parts:

700c wheels are wider than suitcases and cannot be couriered, so I need to find them locally. A replacement rear wheel is a priority!

I'm still to receive a seatpost and a rear mech, to be brought by Sandbag (up there ^^^^).

Painting:

Today I took the frame 12km across Nairobi to see a very talented auto painter. I asked around a little, and everyone said "See Nozy" (actual name Michael). His work is pretty amazing. He met me on a bike which he'd painted, it had intricately airbrushed portraits along the downtube and the paint was a "magic" TVR colour-change effect. Took him four days, apparently.

Nozy is based a great distance from me in a low-income part of town with questionable roads, and my visit was not without calamity.

He quoted me £33 to do a strip, colour coat, detailing on engraved lugs, decals, clear coat.

Which colour for the frame?

I have black rims, black decals, black bar tape, black Rolls saddle. Nozy's local paint shop offers a barrage of colour options, and I'm spoilt for choice.

I'm thinking about going the soft glittery mauve route, exactly like this Lamborghini's "Mauve Thirty Met. 210113":

Alternatively, there's Audi's Javagruen LY6W:

I'm really tempted to go for something like Isuzu Acid Gold Pearl Metallic:

Good thread

Very interesting stuff , never thought about someone riding in Kenya

^ not heard of Chris Froome...?

Excellent looking project, subscribed.

^^ Once I have the parts for this contraption I'll be able to share with you the beautiful Kenyan countryside and the lively traffic japes.

^ I met a rider who claimed to have trained with Froome in 2005/2006. He looked pretty quick.

I'm now leaning towards this gold colour:

I'd probably then have the lug detailing filled in with black. I hope it'd still look nice on a slightly more modern steel Pinarello, with STIs etc?

I'll have to go and meet Nozy again in Eastleigh so I can pick the colour, discuss decal placement and outline exactly what I need done. It's a trek to get there, but needs to be done!

If anyone knows of any car manufacturer that uses a spangly gold paint, let me know because the shop can probably source it / recreate it.

^ not heard of Chris Froome...?

Excellent looking project, subscribed.

Beat me to it!
Great project, look forward to seeing how this develops.
(Looks like my old 3T Forma bars will be put to excellent use)

Champagne gold colour looks great. A bit like the classic Benotto colour but a bit more yellow.

Looks like my old 3T Forma bars will be put to excellent use

Oh very much so. In a fit of childish impatience I attached the STIs to the bars to the stem, and needed to use much force: the 3ttt stem is a close-fitting 26.0mm with a wide clamp. This was difficult to get around the meandering features of the 3T Forma bars, more so than, say, a Cinelli 1A stem. Some anodising was lost, but will be covered by Italian cork and gel.

With the assembled "cockpit" I have the bold realisation that I will indeed be rewarded with a real, ridable bicycle at the end of this project. It's easy to think only about gear and forget that you're going to ride the thing extensively upon completion.

volkswagen was using the wheatbeige metallic on their 00's models, that's the code LD1W/D1.
and this is an example:

looking forward to see the build finished! :)

Thanks for that breso, it'll be really helpful when I return to the paint shop.

Now for some history, to explain how this Italian frame came to Africa.

**TL / DR: ** I met a Kenyan ex-pro cyclist who recognised my bike as his racing frame from the 90s. He's a cool chap and showed me a photo of the bike in its original form.

Long version:
I once rode the bike (as assembled in the first post) 20km out of Nairobi to Kikuyu village to see Kinja, the most renowned cyclist in Kenya and an ex-pro rider in the 1990s in Europe. The journey involved meandering through rural, forested countryside and tackling some hilly unsealed roads which were quite challenging. The wheels slipped on the red mud and the battered components clattered over rain-carved ruts in the road - the ride felt like a proper pilgrimage.

My guide (a young Kenyan cyclist called Tino) introduced me to Kinja in his home, a collection of corrugated iron buildings full of bicycles. We stood in an alleyway between the buildings, surrounded by an army of kids greasing hubs, truing wheels and sorting through boxes of cassettes. Dozens of apprentice bike mechanics, in effect. He had everything from a vintage Benotto to carbon tri-spokes to strange MTB frames. More wheels than you could count, and boxes deep with components. Almost all of the gear was quite heavily used.

After the mandatory Kenyan greetings and small talk, I explained to Kinja that I had bought a bike and needed some components. Kinja is a man in his 40s who looks about 30, with cheek-length dreads and a strikingly lean physique. As he picked up components from boxes his forearms exhibited the same characteristic, sinewy definition as those of Tour riders. He spoke with such experience, and I felt lucky to be given his time and attention.

I showed him the bike and he agreed it needed some work. He took a closer look, paused noticeably, said that he recognised the frame, and after peering much closer he declared that this was once his racing bike! He'd used the frame nearly 20 years earlier to race for a living in Italy, and had won two stages of the *Tour de *something** on the bike. I can't remember what particular tour it was, I'll ask him when I see him next. He then took me into one of the buildings where he had stacks of photos, and we looked through many of them until we found this:

The bike appears to originally have had a full 8 speed 600 Tricolour groupset and lovely deep black Mavic rims of similar profile to Campagnolo Omega V rims. The Araya saddle shown was his addition and was still present on the bike, albeit severely ripped. The STIs remained in shattered form, and the brake calipers were still holding up in reasonable condition.

I'm looking forward to finishing this bike properly, as I think Kinja would be quite happy to see it tarted up all nice. If only I could find those tasty wheels!

Here's a large picture of Kinya owning a time trial in January 2013, here in Nairobi.

Fantastic story - isn't Kinja Chris Froome's mentor in fact?

Thanks for linking to that article, I wasn't aware of their relationship. It makes a lot of sense though because he's been the figurehead of the cycling community for many years. The Kikuyu township with basic tin huts cited by Froome in that article is the very one at which I met Kinja.

I have a chance to race against Kinja in the North Nairobi Cycle Club criterium in late April. It'd be great to race this Pinarello at that race.

keep it blue!

Yeah, forget the gold, try and restore it as close as poss to that photo!

Looks badass.

^+1, if you want to impress him, restore it to its original state. Lovely story, I suppose the road biking community is a small world in Niarobi, I suspect that bike has had for then a few riders!

Awesome story. I agree that it should stay blue given the heritage.

Then sell it back to him

[QUOTE=Ndeipi;3498920]Finding parts is a non-trivial challenge in Kenya. Most bicycles are Chinese and most wheels are 26". There is no eBay, no KFGSS, no real postal service, no online retailers. All parts sold in shops are either awful Chinese steel, or sub-Deore level Shimano for 3x the UK price. (i.e. 8spd chains are £27).

I have a 3ttt Pinarello pantod stem missing a bolt you can have freecycle, pics to follow