The frame number is 576*(8?), which should put this into late 1960s.
After a soak in plusgas and a long fight, the stem came out just about as I was eyeing up the grinder to cut it off.
Plusgas + bench vice got the ds bb cup out. Next on the menu - drilling out broken bolts from the guards eyelets. Maybe I won't break another drill bit tomorrow.
Strap-on it is then, even though I'd much prefer to put the real thing in there. The reason I've asked about the extra bosses - the ones on the downtube are clearly alloy rivnuts and must have been retrofitted by a previous owner. It also appears that the bike might have started its life as yellow, but was professionally re-painted into brick red.
Looks like folks back in the days were a lot tougher than now, riding with no bottle cages. Or perhaps they just weren't so booked up on the topic of hydration. Messina was a higher end offering for a club rider from what I've managed to gather, so hard to justify not having bosses.
On shorter rides I keep my toolkit in the bottle cage and reserve the butt bag for lights - on longer I'd like to carry two bottles.
The fork is a boat anchor at 850g. The Romani is just over 700g. The Reynolds 531 frame, however is about 150g lighter than a slightly smaller Columbus TSX.
Torqueless - I'd love to be able to keep up with myself, but I often fail to do that. Building bikes is quite an irrational pastime though (I hear most folks buy complete bikes in shops...One day I might try it just to see what it feels like). And reviving retro bikes really is a particularly punishing form of masochism.
Retired racehorses can still bring some joy as beasts of light burden. I like more responsive frames and getting a touring bike just for riding to work would be too boring. Right now I'm looking for a commuter bike, than can perhaps double up as a bad weather road bike. The Romani, as much as I like that frame, is a tougher stretch to make it into a practical everyday bike.
I'll focus on getting the framesets into a decent shape, then decide on the final builds.
BJ - if I bring it back to life, it becomes the commuter, but can probably double as a light tourer or even a gravel bike in the future.
Romani - Begging to be built into a fast summer bike, but the 650b option is still there, turning it into a light gravel.
Bike manufacturers have done a great job of coming up with more standards over the years than one can dream up on a wild LSD trip. I think folks spreading 120 to 130 are just looking to minimise the number of parts in the shed, allow their wheels to be swapped between bikes, simplify future builds, make buying spares easier.