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I do enjoy seeing bikes and their owners who take such good care of a build and all your bikes are in A1 condition - can I ask, do you have all these components / groupsets etc to hand or do you spend (what I assume would be) significant time sourcing them? The 7300 must have taken some time to compile bit by bit and again, everything looks tip-top condition.[/quote]
I normally decide which bike/frame I want & then I will start to source the parts for the groupset I intend to use on it. If its a team bike replica then it will be what ever that particular team used at the time. I do continually run search's on the internet for parts all the time & if I see something thats unmolested (not had the life polished out of it) & at a good price I will normally buy it weather its Shimano, Campagnolo or Mavic regardless of weather I need it at that particular moment in time or not.
I also ran a bike shop for years & know who I sold a lot of the older equipment to so I always contact them first to see if they anything that I need. I also have a lot of connections in the trade as well.
Re the 7300 Dura Ace its all NOS apart from the hubs even the cassette in NOS it took me about 12 months to find the parts at something approaching a realistic price.
With the last 5 rebuilds I've not bothered to fit any Tubs as they never ever get ridden. I never bother to fit the original make of chains I always use KMC chains now with the easy joining link.
I don't think any of my team replica bikes are 100% correct for Two reasons. 1, they tended to change things from race to race as sometimes sponsors would only come on for one particular race in their own country. & 2 the riders back in the 70's & 80's had a lot more freedom regarding what pedals & saddles they could use.
So basically I use what I want, as I think its very very important to preserve some of the more unusual group sets, hence the GIOS/Dura Ace 7300 combination. Like I said every man & his dog uses Super Record, C-Record with Deltas & Dura-Ace 7400, 7410 etc.
I'm glad you enjoyed the Gios
Chris