Faggin Campione del Mondo

[Goldie]

When I was deep in the broken Carlton pain cave last year (viewtopic.php?f=23&t=399314) my dad called and said that he was clearing out the bike bits that he had left, and he wondered whether I'd like any of them? He reminded me that among the clean and carefully boxed components was a frame made by these chaps: http://www.fagginbikes.com/. "It looks rough, but it's got chromed forks and a chrome back end. I think it would looks really good if it was properly renovated." he said. He could only ID the maker because of the Faggin logo cast into the fork crown.

We did a fantastically shady hand over one evening down a road behind a multi storey car park in Doncaster, where we backed our cars up tailgate to tailgate, and hefted the boxes of bits and the Faggin frame from one to the other.

I had a look at the frame when I got home. It had been given the worst respray ever with matte red paint, which was all over the Ofmega crankset (the only component still on the bike). But it was handsome, and big enough for me to ride comfortably. I had a five minute go at polishing the forks, confirmed that the chrome was beyond saving and in an uncharacteristically decisive moment, got it booked into Bob Jacksons. It looked so horrible that it only occurred to me that I should probably have a picture of it before its makeover as Donald was getting his notebook to sign it in for its makeover. Here it is:

 

[Goldie]

There now follows a brief photographic interlude, which, because of the magic of the internet, will last only as long as it takes me to take some reasonable photos of this frame, but in real life lasted from September to December of last year, while it slowly moved up the queue at Jacksons, and I chose and obtained decals for it from Gil in Australia.

Visiting Bob Jacksons was a brilliant experience in itself. I'm from Sheffield, and I used to love visiting the industrial museum at Kelham Island when I was little, and the smell of freshly worked and treated steel that was everywhere in that bit of town. Jacksons had that exact same smell, along with plenty of newly finished frames on the walls to whet the appetite.

Some Faggins were finished with chromovelato style tinted lacquer over chrome, and it crossed my mind that mine might have been like that. But I plumped for Ferrari red with chrome forks and back end, and crossed my fingers that this wasn't too far from what it would have looked like when new. I also forgot until it was too late that my mum in law speaks Italian pretty well, and would have been happy to translate an email to Faggin to see if they could ID the bike from its serial number, which was revealed Jacksons took the old paint off.

My Christmas hangover was slowly dying away, and the first magical emptying of the overful recycling bin - with all of its festive season empty bottles - had just happened when it was time to go and pick up the frame. And here it is:

 

[asjc]

Re:

I think at the quality end they were very nice frames, i love stuff from that period.
I have one that has been turned into a single as its a really heavy old touring frame. good luck with it.

 

[Goldie]

Re: Re:

I think at the quality end they were very nice frames, i love stuff from that period.
I have one that has been turned into a single as its a really heavy old touring frame. good luck with it.

Thanks - I am really looking forward to getting it back on the road. I don’t think it’s top of the line - there are details like the Faggin name in the seat stay top eyes that this one doesn’t have. But Jacksons have done a brilliant job of bringing it back to life.

Do you have any pictures of yours?

 

[Peachy!]

Nothing quite like a trip down Stanningley road and going through all those paint samples....