Mike's Bikes
56cm Tange single-butted 1020 Hi-Tensile 1/.7 gauge frame. Current weight w/pedals: 24.2 pounds
Hand-cut & painted lugs on mail-order catalog bike. One thing to love about the 70s. The manufacturer remains a mystery, but similar lugs are seen on Centurions of the time. There is a "JAPAN" sticker on the seattube above the bottom bracket and serial# 9278565 (likely meaning 1978 manufacture) stamped adjacent on the downtube.
I scraped together $179 for this JC Penney catalog bike in the summer of 1979, then slowly spent three times that trying to turn it into one of those $700 Euro bikes I couldn't afford a few months earlier. Teenagers now do this with Civics, you know. It was originally equipped with Shimano Titleist/Selecta components (including centerpull brakes -- note the seatstay bridge) and weighed 28 pounds, but a season of mail-order deliveries later it was a 21-pound Pan-Euro mutt in sew-ups. I've recently re-porked it to 24.2 with some era-correct things. The Brooks saddle is half its current heft if my common core math skills are up to date.
Original components changed-out for: Universal 68 sidepull brakes; Brooks Pro Team saddle, Suntour Cyclone rear derailleur; Shimano 600EX downtube friction shifters, front derailleur, & crank; SR Campy-copy pedals; SR Cinelli-copy stem, bars, & seatpost; Alfredo Binda toe straps; Christophe toe clips; Sedis Sport chain; Shimano 600 headset. Back when teenager-me was trying for the 20-pound road bike this rocked Fiamme tubular rims. I shaved another 100 grams by replacing the "touring" fork with a 45mm-rake chromed Tange Champion race fork. And ... um ... I hack-sawed two inches off the seat post. Teenagers, right?
Long chainstays and relaxed angles make for a languid ride, and it's easy to rub the front derailleur cage under power. But once underway this bike motors just fine, and it has proved indestructible over four decades now. (2021 Update: The old man can still flex the bottom bracket. Yo).
60 cm (Colnago ctt measurement. Actual is 57.1cm ctc) Columbus Cromor double butted .9/.6-.7/.9 gauge lugged frame. Current weight w/pedals: 21 pounds
What on earth makes just a frame worth twice the cost of the finest complete bike on offer from the JC Penney catalog? (This is foreshadowing. A spoiler alert. If you've read this far, you have the disease too, and you know exactly why you're still at the top fraction of this page). The little ad in the back of VeloNews made a fine case for the outlay, but this kind of money was only theoretical to a grocery bagger. Time and eBay fixed that.
I fully buy into the hype on steel tubes joined together by guys from the Old Country whose first names end in "o." There’s an over-the-road resonance and return on energy that's missing in other bikes. This Colnago is a thoroughbred that has become hardwired to my cycling soul. After tens of thousands of happy miles together she recently had a midlife crises: her derailleur hanger snapped just as I was rolling into my driveway after a long ride. Blessed though the timing was, this caused an ungodly amount of trauma to the rear triangle, so I removed the derailleurs, twisted and bent metal, then cut a snappy new gold chain to-size for a 70-inch gear. She now has slick little stretchy silicone LEDs front and rear. We cruise the streets silently late at night remembering the journey, plotting more.
55.88 cm Columbus SL double butted .9/.6/.9 gauge lugged frame. Current weight w/pedals: 22.6 pounds
A bike from the Molteni team inventory of 1971-74. Not a size Eddy would have ridden, but somebody dressed in Molteni Orange shed sweat upon it on the Le Col de la Croix de Fer, et al. I love the way everything screws together easily and functions as it should on this bike, whose frame and componentry represent the pinnacle of what the world's racers rode for decades before we had asymentrical hyperglide drivetrains hung on nanofiber monocoques. As much as I love brifters, the main improvement we've seen in the last half-century of cycling is a better-shaped inner cage plate on the front derailleur. After weighing this out and considering the period state-of-the-art componentry (but for the saddle I don't see any real grams coming out of an SL frame with drilled Nuovo Record & sew-ups), it's doubtful any pro was riding a bike much under 22 pounds back in the day.Despite the thinner tubing, the ride is at once alive and sublime as with the larger Cromor-tubed Super above -- proving Ernesto knew his stuff when it came to matching tubing wall thicknesses with frame size.
53 cm (long-ish effective toptube makes this fit fine with seat/stem adjustments) Reynolds 853 double butted .7/.45/.7 gauge tig-welded frame. Current weight w/pedals: 19.2 pounds
Poke around on eBay and you'll see a nice Waterloo-built 853 Zurich or Maillot Jaune come up every now and then. The previous owner built this in full Campy/Cinelli and took great care of it ... and as this one came to market back when Lance was considered god and Greg his bitter accuser, the whole thing cost less than a carbon crankset. Of all my bikes, this is the raciest. It just disappears under me and goes.
57 cm Columbus XCr double butted .6-.65/.4-.45/.6-.65 gauge tig-welded frame (3.98 pounds in-the-paint), graffitied and signed-off by the master himself on the Day of St. Maximus of Verona, 2009. Current weight w/pedals: 19.6 pounds
This frame lived on a gallery wall for a decade. On the night the owner decided to release it to the fates of wrenches and roadways, fate found me on eBay (Developing Theme). The build took a few months as parts arrived during the pandemic supply chain bottleneck, then a few bonus weeks as I figured out that assembling the latest Campagnolo group means acquiring the latest silly-priced Campagnolo "specialist tools," including front derailleur gapping guides to clear ever-so-slightly asymmetrical chainring teeth to the sub-millimeter and $200 chain tools to solve a problem Shimano solves better for free. Add Torx heads living randomly where hex heads once lived quite peaceably and "user manuals" that amount to the middle finger in four different languages ... and I'm really just about strip everything off, throw 105 on and spend the rest of my days bitching about money-grubbing Italians ... giving special attention to the user manuals, which basically say, "Make sure you install this part correctly. It's really recommended you pay a specialist to do it. Why are you still reading this user manual, schmuck? We're not going to tell you how to install it in any language."
But now that everything is together and tuned to the millimeter, I suppose there are those resolute clicks and right-now brakes. The industrial artistry. Mainly, it's the brakes.
The Ride
Oversize paper-thin steel tubes and massive chainstays rolling on stiff Zondas and unyielding Gatorskins. Have I just assembled the nutcracker suite? Nope, and hooray. Dario's finest rides like Ernesto's above minus a few pounds ... slightly more alert ... a little more road feedback. Italian steel souls laugh at the eons and dance on the face of marketing blather. And in motion, it ... hums. Dario's ghost is in the machine. We ride.
56 cm 3AL/2.5V titanium tig-welded frame. Current weight w/pedals: 18.5 pounds
The XB-70 Valkyrie was a massive delta-winged Mach 3 bomber powered by six General Electric YJ93 turbojet engines that proved too over-the-top for even the go-go 60s. It was perfected just as Russia developed anti-aircraft missiles capable of hitting it. Two were built, one was crashed, and the survivor now lives at the United States Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. This ground-bound Airborne Valkyrie was also doomed, introduced in the midst of squadron-upon-squadron of carbon fiber raptor attacks during the rapid Fe-Al-Ti-CF materials evolution of the new millennium.
The massive shaped chainstays (Airborne calls them GAMS ... Graceful Arc Maximum Stiffness ... a literary/engineering masterpiece if you ask me) ensure great power transfer, but the rear bites back more than steel or carbon triangles on big bumps. Any attempt to trail brake on wet curves will bite back even harder. And if the roads aren't perfect, the thing loosens headsets every few thousand miles. I recently rebuilt this in the latest Shimano 105, and now it's my very favorite rain bike of all time. Smooth, fast, tough. Feels forever.
"Medium" (55 cm) carbon monocoque with full carbon dropouts. Current weight w/pedals: 15.6 pounds
This is the only bike I've ever purchased from a bike store. It was on end-of-the-year clearance at Performance and really only needed a good wheelset (Blackset Race clinchers) to hit the sub 7 kg club. Carbon really is the current state of the art for the reasons you might suspect: Everything is fat and stiff where it needs to be and spare and feathery where it doesn't. You can't replicate this in metal. The rear triangle is so tight that the engineers called up the wisp of a crescent void at the back of the seat tube for tire clearance -- sort of like those gimmicky 70s Schwinns, but here this is no gimmick.
Over small bumps and chipseal this bike reads the road like a steel bike filtered through 1/8" rubber bushings ... or titanium filtered through 1/16". It glides/floats over the bumps and eliminates the tingly sensation you feel with metal bikes on rougher asphalt. Over bigger bumps the frame's damping abilities are exceeded, so a major frost heave can be a pretty mean experience compared to the quick, light spring-over snap you feel on a steel race bike.
Back in the steel era, Ernesto Colnago once said that everyone wants to climb on a 16-pound bike, but no one wants to descend on a 16-pound bike. I think the ability to manipulate the stiffness and shape of CF tubes puts that worry to rest. The bike never feels nervous.
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My Contribution to Internet Arguments
CF vs Ti vs. Steel in these Road Bikes
The carbon fiber GTR is a fast, light, comfortable and feels like it will play nice on any road. Zero bb flex and straight up the hill you go. The bike never hints at being fragile, and the glide-over-small-imperfections carbon factor makes for more confident forward progress on iffy roads than even a fat-tired steel mountain bike. It's probably a perfect modern road bike.
The Ti Valkyrie is a few beats smoother than steel of similar geometry over chipseal, however, the geometry and tube sizes that allow light, stiff, and sprightly to play nice together in a metal bike make for nasty work over sharp bumps compared to carbon, and especially steel. A fast, dreamy, bomb-proof ride on any half-way decent road. Probably the bike you ride around in The Apocalypse when it's in town.
The 853 LeMond is among the finest steel bikes I've ever ridden, but I rode it for over a decade with a harsh wheelset before I realized this. After swapping out low-spoke-count semi-aero rims for a set of Blackset Race clinchers ... WOW. A smooth, light, unobtrusive bike that just becomes part of me. Props to the craftsmen in Waterloo and the guy who designed it, America's greatest probably-non-doping bike racer.
The Cromor Colnago Super Sprint and SL Colnago Super Eddy Merckx tie for the most supple and playful of these bikes. These skinny-tubed racers from the classic days give up nothing in speed to the others, but are every bit as happy dawdling through haphazard urban infrastructure as flying down the highway. Cross gravel parking lots ... run some ruts ... fjord the sidewalk for a few blocks. They have your back.
The XCr Responsorium is a lighter, slightly more alert and responsive dead ringer for the Cromor Colnago, which is really no surprise given the nearly identical frame sizes and geometry. It proves in all its Ciavete glory that rock stars live forever and always get the chicks.
Since all of these materials can be made into first-class race frames and subjective ride arguments rage all over the internets, here are some cold, hard subjective ratings based on the race frames I've ridden on 700c 23s with identical tire pressures and using similar seats and bar tape ... noting that all frames, regardless of material, ride somewhat more harshly in smaller sizes and especially in compact designs.
Material Road Buzz/Sharp Impacts (Lower = Better)
1" Steel 3/2
OS Steel 3/3
Aluminum 5/5
Titanium 2/4
Carbon 1/3
Executive Summary: Well-designed carbon remains tough to beat. But set up a classic steel frame with a fisftul-of-seatpost Coppi-style and ride through eternity with no doubts.
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Campagnolo vs. Shimano vs. SRAM
Campy: Click
Shimano: Swish
SRAM: CLACK-CLAAAACK
Best Brakes: Campy
Best Front Derailleur: Shimano
Best Shifting Scheme for Numb Fingers that Doesn't Trigger Inadvertent Braking: SRAM
Manufacturer Tiers
Chorus. 105. Rival. All of them work every bit as well as the top-tier offerings from their respective manufacturers. You give up prestige, durability drama, and 200 grams. With a sub-2-pound CF frame you can hit the UCI weight limit with mere 105. Still want Record, Dura-Ace, Red? I get it.
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The Zen of the Hipster ...
55 cm (Bianchi ctt measurement. High track bb makes this fit more like a 56 ctc road bike) Reynolds 520 double butted .8/.5/.8 gauge tig-welded frame. Current weight w/pedals: 17.4 pounds
Fixed is great exercise, just like "they" say. It changes the way you think about your ride, and it forces your legs to do things that are good for fitness and recovery between road bike workouts. I don't ride this in traffic. It is Zen on an early-morning ride through the woods.
18" 6061 straight-gauge aluminum tig-welded frame. Current weight w/pedals: 30.4 pounds
Shipped quickly from Bikesdirect.com and packed well. The assembly was marred by component bolts that were *way* overtightened at the factory. The back disc caliper bolts will need to be drilled out if that piece ever needs replacement. The fronts finally yielded to WD-40 and a long hex key with a breaker bar. I might not have noticed if both calipers weren't assembled well off the centerline of the brake rotors when the wheels are centered in the forks.
Handling on the Basecamp is nimbler and a little busier compared to the steel Schwinn Ranger discussed below. Frame tube diameter is very similar to the Ranger, so I attribute the livelier ride to four pounds less weight and slightly different geometry. A serious off-trail rider would probably find this bike competent for rut dodging, but on the street this is getting closer to an upright road bike for my purposes. The stock setup on this bike is otherwise great: geared for anything with a bright orange rust-proof frame, we will be going many dark, wet places together.
The Schwinns
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1974 Schwinn Paramount P-10 Deluxe Touring [Campagnolo Nuovo Record 5-speed x2, Regina chain & freewheel. Cinelli bars & stem. Christophe clips & straps. Weinmann rims. 10-speed] |
24" Reynolds 531 frame. Current weight w/pedals/pedal reflectors/tire savers: 26.2 pounds
I did send Schwinn a quarter for a 1974 catalog. I was floored to see that the $100 Schwinn was nothing. They wanted four bills for their top-of-the-line Paramount. Later, a relative gave me The Clear Creek Bike Book for Christmas — one of those meditative hippy-dippy granola & moonbeam books from the era — whose forward by Peter Lawlor flat-out groomed me into the multiple two-wheeled offender I am today. The balance of the book was two-parts tech and one-part sniveling bike snobbery about what to buy and what not. Masi, Cinelli, the Peugeot PX-10, and Schwinn Paramount: they were the finest race bikes money could buy — so those became the “grail bikes” of a kid who wouldn’t know that term for another 40 years.
Fast-forward to 1979. I’ve finally scraped together the cash to buy a surprisingly well-specced department store bike only to take almost everything off and replace it with a hodge-podge of Japanese/Euro parts to lose four pounds. At my first bicycle race I picked up a copy of VeloNews and learned that I didn’t know jack about bicycles: Not centerpull brakes: sidepulls. Not Reynolds 531: Columbus SL. Not Schwinns or Peugeots: Colnagos (still Masi and Cinelli, but that was fading-fast fuddy-duddy stuff).
To cap a long story that was never short: apparently the same deal with the older and wealthier kindred spirit who ordered this Paramount in 1974. Shortly after he bought this Paramount the Italians came for him too. He hung his new state-of-the-art Chicago racer on the wall and ordered a Colnago.
And so Schwinn's finest effort gathered dust (and assorted frame nicks that are clearly from storage; the drivetrain is still pristine) in all its Kool Lemon & Chromed Nervex-lugged glory for 50 years, before … (You know. eBay & that guy).
This is the P-10 Deluxe Touring model specced with Nuovo Record sidepull brakes (Weinmann centerpulls were standard) to complement the balance of standard Nuovo Record. Save for the wheels/tires (27” Weinmann clinchers rolling on Nuovo Record hubs instead of tubular rims/tires), 1/4" more fork rake, and dropout/fork eyelets, this is identical to the P-13 Professional Road Racing Paramount of that year.
It’s weird to see Schrader valves on a bike like this, but also “so Schwinn.” The company definitely hastened its demise by trying to inventory/spec so many options across its mid- and high-lines. This year you could also get a deluxe-r Deluxe Touring Paramount: The P-15 (same frame yet) with a wide-carriage re-branded Shimano Crane at the rear and a triple crank in addition to the 27” clincher rims … with Weinmann centerpulls … and Schwinn safety lever extensions (?!).
For giggles and comparison I have swapped wheels for the tubular Nisi/Clements from the Eddy Merckx Colnago above (Remember the days when you could just do that)? With identical wheels and components the two are SL-brazed-by-Luigi vs. 531-brazed-by-Wanda-or-Louise brothers from another mother: two corners of the very love triangle the original owner found himself caught in back in 1974.
So is there anything between the two very finest race bikes you could buy during the golden age of bicycle snobbery?
The Paramount’s ornate chromed Nervex-lugs-over-cheerful-Bike-Boom-Kool-Lemon are to die for. And the bike is stiff and stout, just as its maker and decades of factory-supported six-day racers intended. The Colnago’s more discreet thin-tapered plain lugs are Molteni Orange like the rest of this bike: the color Schwinn would copy with Sunset Orange during the height of their wild light & bright 70s color palette because, well … every in-the-know cyclist the world-over was smitten by Molteni Orange Colnagos back then. But the Campy crank with Colnago clover cut-outs and Cinelli stem embellished with hand-painted diamonds knock sexy out of the park here ... even if I find this svelte and supple Italian masterpiece just a little bit whippy compared to the Paramount under heavier wattage. So that answers the question about the hype. The Italians will probably always have it. They alone forge perfection, style, and shortcoming into pure, lustable art.
The ride comparison on identical tubulars? Do you like orange or yellow?
24" Schwinn 4130 fillet-brazed frame. Current weight w/pedals: 32.0 pounds
A pristine example from the Chicago hand-build cage. Original Schwinn Sports Touring gumwalls (still showroom shiny with -0- wear but a small strip of gumwall delamination). Matching Opaque Blue valve caps & bar tape.
Chicago Schwinn Nerd Stuff: Schwinn's fillet-brazed straight-gauge seamless 4130 tubing has thinner walls and was therefore constructed in a significantly larger diameter (1-1/8") than the company's 1010 electro-forged tubing (1"), and catalog-advertised weight of the era is accurate when checked against a modern electric scale. So compared to similarly-sized electro-forged frames (Varsity/Continental, etc.) you were saving about four pounds springing for a fillet-brazed Sports Tourer with alloy rims and forged aluminum French/Japanese drivetrain components over the stamped steel equipment on the Varsity/Continental lines.
22" Schwinn 1010 steel electro-forged frame. Current weight w/pedals: 35.3 pounds.
So it’s a Varsity with tubular steel forks, centerpull brakes, Randonneur bars, and Schwinn’s-by-1973 grudging nod to the convenience of at least having a quick-release hub on the wheel least likely to get a flat. But it’s NFL Hall of Fame quarterback and great-great-great grandson of Brigham Young Steve Young’s childhood Schwinn Continental. Its decades of neglect have been overhauled and oiled up and covered in Miami-Vice-Pink-on-Opaque-Blue letters that announce the cycle’s provenance with great flair: "Childhood Bike of the Great-Great-Great Grandson of the Second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints and One of his 56-58 Wives" -- plus some pink flamingos. It is periodically employed to eff with the clean-cut Mormons who stop by on their spiff mountain bikes to spread the Good News and shop for new wives. They leave doubting the validity of their souls. I fail to notice any improvement from the tubular forks and centerpull brakes over the lesser spec on the Varsity. We’re even.
(The recent polar vortex caused every single pink sticker to fall off this bike. Plus, the front tire I just claimed never goes flat went flat. I am done effing with Mormons and onto effing with Jehovah’s Witnesses. When they ring now I tell them we're all witches and offer to sign them up for broom flying lessons on Wednesdays at three. Saves a ton on commuting, etc. Will keep you updated).
21" 1010 steel electro-forged frame. Current weight w/pedals: 38.4 pounds.
In the mid-60s the company dithered between calling this variation of the Varsity Sport the "All-Weather" or the "With Fenders" model. For the princely $5 upcharge on a standard 1967 Varsity Sport the buyer got bright polished chromed fenders and the option of Violet paint instead of Coppertone ... and distributors and dealers got another small inventory nightmare. This violet example is fitted with period-correct whitewall tires (Commonly seen on 50s/60s Schwinns with fenders ... but not on this model. Call it a mild restomod).
21" 1010 steel electro-forged frame. Current weight w/pedals: 39.6 pounds.
Well ... this is funner than all the other bikes I own when kept to tooling around in my (flat) neighborhood ... where indeed it is kept. The regal English Racer perch and classic Sturmey-Archer clack-clack-clack in second & third gear totally sends it (to Mary Poppinsland or Miss Almira Gulchland ... you decide). These are what most people in the world ride and have been riding since the advent of the safety bicycle.
(A 2023 Aside: My wife and I just spent a few days in Emilia-Romagna -- the Motor Valley. Even in the chi-chi land of Ferraris and Ducatis, ancient steel "tourist bar" bikes like these of every origin and condition are still what people of all ages ride in the cities here ... not one Colnagetti in sight).
17.5" straight-gauge 1010 steel tig-welded frame. Current weight w/pedals: 34.9 pounds
The guy working in the bike aisle at Target told me to feel free to take this for a spin in the store. It was a fun ride while it lasted: the floors at Target are smoother than any road and it's hilarious calling out "on your left" as you wind through Lingerie. Somewhere around Housewares a manager flipped out. I told him the guy in the bike aisle was telling everybody to test bikes in the store and that teenagers were off doing motocross jumps using the tire ramps from Automotive. While Dwight Shrute got on his walkie-talkie I booked for the checkout and walked out with the evidence. After 20 years and several thousand miles of urban warfare and late-night suburban puttering I must insist this is the best $115 I’ve ever spent in bicycling.
These very inexpensive "Chinese Schwinns" are often rabidly bashed on the web by the bike snob crowd, but they're one pedal & toeclip upgrade away from urban biking perfection. You will not find a better or more durable recreational ride at any price, and you might get an epic test ride besides.
2008 Schwinn Sting-Ray Blueberry Krate [Schwinn Sting-Ray MAG crank & Schwinn Slik rear tire. Coaster Brake]
Cantilevered straight-gauge 1010 steel tig-welded frame.
Current weight w/pedals: 37.1 pounds
I grew up in New Brunswick, New Jersey in the 60s and these things were everywhere. For whatever reason, most had their handlebars replaced with those tiny chromed & foamed automotive steering wheels you could buy in the air freshener/fuzzy dice aisle at Kmart — only to be ridden no-hands anyway — maybe after the KoolKidz figured out a tiny steering wheel provided possibly less control than no-hands.
The Sting-Ray’s Jersey street punk image was already working against me when it came time for my first real bike. My mother was also convinced those banana seats were going to bust-up my junk the first time I came off the pedals the wrong way.
Decades later when it came time to buy my son’s first real bike, the old Schwinn company was long gone, but this Chinese Sting-Ray (Krate, if you will — it does have that 16” front wheel) was sitting on the sales floor at Walmart in 2008 for the same retail price as the original 1963 Sting-Ray. I snapped it up. The kid rode it around for a week, didn’t bust up his junk, and said he felt like the coolest kid on the block. We had an epic blizzard. By the time everything melted he was ready to go faster and farther than poser bikes like this go. So now pops can be seen in the neighborhood on this periodically — holding on to the factory handlebars and risking his junk. (If mom could only see the saddles I’ve risked my junk to over the years).
The only real difference between “Chicago-made” and “Chinese-made” Sting-Rays is four letters. One is electro-forged and one is tig-welded.
(2024 Aside: The Pacific Cycle iteration of Schwinn recently noticed they were practically giving away the Chinese copy of this coveted old boomer bike, so they killed off that $59 Walmart offering and are now selling essentially the same bike via Amazon in limited-edition colors for $400-600 a pop. Ouch).
On the Trainer
56cm True Temper 4130 steel lugged frame. Current weight w/pedals: 27.5 pounds.
Lovingly assembled by the fine folks at Schwinn's infamous Greenville, Mississippi plant with an upside-down chainstay bridge ... so that the water drain hole acts as a water collector hole. My wife and I have taken turns pedaling this thing like mad for hours on end, but after several decades we haven't gotten it to move an inch. The ride is pure steel. It feels like you're riding on carpet, see.
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