Colnago Road Bike Mystery Please Read

Hi everyone
One of my school class mates came to visit today
Inside his van he had a nice Colnago Road bike,he claims it to be from the mid to late 80s
In Saronni colours.
When i took a closer look,it had colnago decals on top of seat stays,chainstays.Not engraved.
Columbus tubing decal
Campagnolo Brev Rear dropouts and fork dropouts
Chromed front forks (no sloping fork crown) or engraving
Top tube had 3 brake cable braze-ons

A mixture of components,Campag GS chainset,Nuovo record rear mech (pat81),Super record front mech (braze-on),Super record seat post (27.2)
Suntour Superbe Brake levers and calipers.

I found some interesting features.On the inside of the front fork crown lugs was 4-card symbols,Heart,Club,Spade and a small diamond
What looks like Boccamma spearpoint lugs
Also a weird looking Bottom bracket shell cutout,looking like 2 reversed "D".and a 4-digit frame number (numeric)
He has been told that it is not a genuine Colnago??

Could it be something else with Colnago Decals??

All information will be gratefuly received
Cipo

The fork crown thing you describe sounds like the Ciocc logo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clinicblue/2654352385/

The bottom bracket on a Ciocc looks like this, which is different
from your description, though, I think:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clinicblue ... otostream/

Maybe Ciocc forks on a different frame?

Johnny

Colnago mystery

Hi Johny
Thanks for the reply
Yeh i thought of Ciocc,had a look at the classicrendezvous site for that
The 4-symbol engraving are on the top inside of the forks,if my memory serves me right it has the spade at the top with the others descending with a small diamond at the end
I suppose i could ask him to drop the forks to see if the number correponds with frame.
Thanks again
Oh and maybe take some photos for reference.
Malc

The fork reinforcements with playing card symbols were a standard item at one time and could be obtained separately to braze on below the fork crown. They may even still be available from Ceeway.

Please see photos of the colnago

Those are the 'add-on' fork pieces I mentioned and the lug cut-outs are standard (Prugnat I think?). Colnago (and other famous Italian frame maker) transers were readily available over the counter in the late 80's. I had a Peugeot with them and a friend has an Aende lo-pro with them fitted. I'm not a Colnago expert and don't pretend to be but this looks a bit suspicious.

However, as usual, I could be wrong again!