curyam
Devout Dirtbag
My Clive Stuart bike was purchased years ago as a used frameset, from one of the better, road bike shops in Seattle. It’s built of 531 DB tubing, stays and fork with Campagnolo drop outs. The frame was built with a wrap-around joining of the seat stays to the seat tube and an integrated seat post clamp. Possibly, Prugnat lugs? It came with a Campy NR Headset and BB.
As a college student, I originally built up the bike with scrounged parts, eventually finishing it with Campy and Campy copy components from; MKS, SR Royal, Sunshine and Suntour Superbe. The bike served me well as a commuter and all-purpose bike and friend. It’s a veteran of multiple Seattle to Portland double century rides.
Sometime later I decided to update the bike with index shifting and newer components. It was very battle worn so I made the difficult decision of losing the original decals and repainting the bike. It was media blasted and a few braze-ons were added, rear drops spread. It was sprayed in the original red color with Dupont Imron. From Reynolds, I obtained and used a special 25th anniversary decal, other than that is was nameless and badgeless.
While I enjoyed the bike, it lost all of the elegance and charm it once had. It needed to be restored back to a seventies period bike. It will be a rider, I want to use it and enjoy the bike so NOS parts weren’t necessary. I used existing parts and slowly gathered clean examples of other period Campy parts to finish off the bike. Some non-anodized parts were cleaned and polished. Anodized parts retain their original finish. Cinelli stem and bars are used and my original (1973) small rivet Brooks Professional saddle was recalled to duty. Wheels are Mavic tubular rims on Campy NR small flange hubs. Charles Hadrann at Wright Brother's cycles helped with his vast Campy knowledge and parts bins.
Decals were a challenge. I had but one picture of the bike before it was repainted. It seems there are not many examples of Clive Stuart Bikes to compare with. The bikes I have seen all have somewhat different graphics applications. I computer created the decal’s graphics as best could be and Velocals did an excellent job of producing them. (thanks JR!) They now available from Velocals to others restoring a CS bike. The decals were clear coated and polished. Lug highlighting was also difficult. Bob Freeman of Elliott Bay Cycles gave me some tips and I was able to complete the job myself.
I also created a website about what I leaned about Clive Stuart Cycles
please see www.myclive.homestead.com
More pix on next post.
