snakeknuckles
Retro Newbie
Good morning to everyone: I've been riding bikes most of my 56 years and hope to ride a whole lot longer. You know you're old when your new ride is called vintage... My normal road travel is via a Kestrel 200 SC- I bought it when Kestrel was bought out by schwinn in '92. It has been a great ride and I have only once had to re-epoxy the bottom bracket. But that is not what I am writing about today. Back in 1970, my very first job (and perhaps my best job ever) was working as a mechanic at a bike shop full of brand new Italian bicycles. (there was probably mafia involved) We used to pick the best bikes dripping with the best Campy parts and assemble them for the show room floor.- There was a whole warehouse stacked with bike boxes that we would peruse in our leisure time until the owner told us if we ever went back in there to get more bikes he would chop our b___s off. Needless to say I acquired a fairly run of the mill bianchi while working there that had a small defect and got stripped for parts. I looked at it as an improvement to my Raleigh record 5 sp. I worked on it for a few days and got it assembled with sugino crank, weinman center pulls and a campy record rear derailleur, wide flange hubs and sew ups. It was a great ride and I actually did some criterium racing on it. Then about two years ago an old acquaintance said I had given it to him about 30 years ago and did I want it back. The bike is pretty much the way it was and now I want to get it back on the road. For starters I just want to switch to clinchers and so found some 700c 36 spoke rims on ebay. They should work, but in order to lace 3x I need 318mm spokes which nobody seems to make? It looks like I can go 2x and use 310mm which I found at Cambria. Any thoughts?
