Reinventing the wheel...

Having been fortunate in finding the excellent Forza Vardars in NOS for Tecnos 2 on last quest, this time it was different. No such luck now. After searching for months, brand new or second hand, mostly in minor condition, was now the reality. Various visits to sellers on the Dutch Marketplace revealed either too much breakwear on the rims, scratches, or were just misfits in style. One obviously neat set at first sight even turned out to have a tear at the side of the rim.  And on all occasions pricing was still considerable.. So new it would be. As basically, wheels are the bike. The soul at least.. The whizz, the rotation, the contact with the earth. The bikewheel is a thing of beauty. Primary mechanics generating motion and speed still within the human scale. The primary bike part, of which the Master in its awesome condition would deserve a high quality outfit.

Considering the very good experience with the proud Dutch FFWD brand, I choose the TYRO. A 45mm high & 29mm wide rimmed piece of modern technique and robust design. And one of the last available Campa fitting rim brake carbon wheelsets on the market in the present disc brake era. With the wider rim and conventional round spokes, straight pull, even suitable for gravel bikes. A straightforward and allround heavy duty carbon wheel. Not the lightest set around, but a perfect fit for my old steel frame. I collected them at the factory in Zwolle, and met Idsart, the owner of the place, who invited me on a tour around the production line & workshop. A nice experience.. So all in all perfect choice, and match, and a magnificent ride. A great asset for a bike lover.

Super Mario..

A true treasure..

Being the standard nowadays, black parts were still not that common in the nineties. NOS from that era is presently still available, but not in great abundance and very expensive. With Tecnos 2, I was lucky to find the Veloce groupset almost immediately, meaning I never really had to search deep for the drivetrain and shifters etc., and so I expected things would not be that easy. But thanks to one person in particular, also this time the quest was remarkably short. That person is Mr. Mario Verhoeven, a real Bike Doctor. Mario is running the webshop: https://defietsenmaker.nl/ An absolute treasure cove for NOS retro bike parts. In The Netherlands even. Lucky me again. Mario turned out to have available in his shop: A complete Campa Centaur carbon crankset (Power Torque), plus front & rear derailleurs Campa Chorus mixed steel / carbon, all from the nineties & all NOS. The  front derailleur even with a cam, instead of the ealier version with clamp. The Chorus seatpost I took back from Tecnos 1 and the also brand new Record shifters came from the Dutch Marketplace, not in the retail box as originating from a bulk assembly line packing. The Ergopower cableset, Power Torque cups, Record chain and Veloce cassette are of course still well available new. So this time Campa only for all the mechanics. 

The Famous Master..

Looking back, the idea of owning a Colnago Master must have lingered for a longer time. Having seen quite a few on my quest for the Tecnos and despite my opinion that the Tecnos is still superior in both build and appearance, the Master kept on crossing my mind. Being a fanatic cyclist and with an increasing love for bike tinkering and admiration of the fantastic combination of steel and Art Deco Style, I soon decided that looking out for the famous Master was the right thing to do. The winter months would be the perfect time for the search, with long evenings and ample time behind the screen. Ample time, indeed, to find out that a Master in the preferred type and style is not easy to find. Despite its overall presence on the web in general, an available version meeting the desired fit in both color and correct size is quite hard to come by. The AD10 (Art Decor Blue/White) coloring had my preference combined with a full chrome fork. A commonly available outfit upon release in the mid nineties, but nowadays the availability is surprisingly limited and specimens in good condition are simply unaffordable. On one occasion an X Light 57 seemed within reach however. In the southern part of France on Ebay.  But with negotiations still going on, the seller suddenly decided he wanted to keep the bike after all. Although this particular version had the right color and size, it was equipped with a blue-white fork instead of the desired full chrome, but the condition was so very good that I was still disappointed to have missed it, especially considering the amount of time spent on searching. But in the end, the chrome fork came. I had already decided that Colnago #3 would also have carbon wheels together with other accents in black, so what color would be a better match with black and white than.... yellow!  As a very neat version suddenly showed up on the Dutch Marketplace. A 1993 Master Olympic AD14 in size 57 in apparrent neat condition. Not so perfect as my Tecnos from Belgium it would turn out, but still very good. It took a 200 km drive to the northeast to discover that it had two paint chips around the bracket area on the left side, some paint missing on the edge of the seat tube next to the seat post and one paint chip on the dropout on the drive side. The lemon yellow, enriched with pink and blue decorations, looked marvelous. The chrome fork was perfect. The groupset was Shimano Ultegra 1st generation & the wheels were a rarely seen set of Cane Creeks. A fair deal.. I was the proud owner of a Colnago Master.

With a similar idea about the outfit, plus the experience of Tecnos two, and having the special tools already in place, I had a good starting point. There would again be as many parts possible in Campa New Old Stock, but with one difference: I wanted parts in black, making a great fit with the yellow & white of the frame, besides two exceptions: the new Campa Record headset which I already found, and the brake set. I decided not to search for the Monoplanars this time, but the equally well shaped Campa BR-04 RE in blank metal to fit with the chrome fork. For the rest of the parts, besides the black, I had no idea or further preference yet. But that was the nice part of it. As searching on the web while not knowing what you will run into is highly exciting. And very useful and informative.      The quest was ready to start...

A magnificent experience..

The three month period of searching combining, mounting and fitting was a great experience and truly engrossing. It was a highly educational and instructive exercise with an end result I am very happy with. I consider myself fortunate to have found exactly the frame and parts to my taste on this fantastic journey.. . I meanwhile spent as much time on the bike as I could and it's a perfect ride.  How lucky a man can be...

Chain, cables and collateral..

Considering all of the fitting and mounting challenges, there were two items where I had my concerns. One had been the crankshaft as described earlier, but that worked out perfectly well.. The other however was the space margin for the 10 speed chain running aside the dropout. That is; if positioned in the highest gear; running on both the large front-blade and smallest gearwheel on the cassette. Compared to the narrow 11 speed chain I was accustomed to, the Campa 10 speed chain certainly looked wider with the the closing pin even a bit protruding. Ingenious as it might be, I was a bit insecure about the Forza universal body, suitable for both Shimano and Campa cassettes. Although designed for 10 speed, Forza / Baufort was new to me and after all, this was a 28 year old steel frame. After mounting, the space margin between the dropout and chain closing pin looked just about sufficient, a small 2 mm approx, and after test riding and gear shifting all turned out to be just fine, to my great relief... So the last jobs to be done were the handlebar tape, black naturally, the positioning of the cables and fine-tuning of both the gearshifting and brakes.  Exercises requiring precision and all in all a rather time consuming affair..

All there was left now were drink bottles and bike pump holders. With the last, I had very good experiences with the Lyzene Carbon Drive Lite. A very convenient and compact little pump, to be easily positioned next to the vertical bottle holder on the seat tube. Regarding the bottle holders I was fortunate once again.. Upon searching the web, I immediately noted the carbon gold Supacaz holder which would be a really perfect fit with the black Colnago mark on the gold area of the down and seat tubes around the bottle holder area. But it turned out to be completely sold out. Also at webshops promising to have them in stock, so it turned out after ordering. But upon re-checking again after our two-week Holiday I was lucky to find a set, even in an outlet sale, notably at the webshop of the famous Van Herwerden brothers in Voorburg NL; an old shop well-known for building their own racing bike frames back in the seventies and eighties. I was very happy to receive these magnificient high quality super lightweight carbon bottle holders which were the most perfect fit imaginable. But that was it. After three months, all of a sudden the end of this exciting period was there... The bike was finished and ready..

Stemming..

For some time I had considered the last ever produced Campa headset in combination an old-fashioned Panto stem, but these are unfit for the modern 31,8 mm compact handlebars, and the more profiled and sizeable stems of today really look great as well, especially with appropriate marking and decoration. Here I was fortunate with the Colnago stem from Hungary, described earlier. The black would fit with the paintwork around the head tube, upper fork area and both the seat post and wheels. The mounting was a nice job and rather easy. The inner fork star flanged nut was perfectly in place and I needed just two of the four remaining spacer rings. The sloping cap to be combined with the already present and new to add bushing, which had a slanting bore allowing the stem to be placed pointing upward or more horizontally, was an easy fit. The horizontal option was the best choice in both handlebar position and appearance. 

Fork and Torque..

One of the most satisfying exercises was the replacement of the headset using the Cyclus tools for driving out and pressing in the bearing cups. Good tooling really does it all. Pushing the upper bearing ring downward over the edge of the fork shaft only succeeds if executed completely straight and horizontally, so I used a stem cap which was left over from Tecnos 1. After it was pushed down over the edge, the Birzman crown race fixing ring and tube did the rest. The most challenging of all the parts to fit however, was the bottom bracket - crank combination, especially because this was Campagnolo Ultra Torque, which was totally new to me. Ingenious as it might be, I personally feel that 2 half axles held together with a bolt seems a bit insecure, compared to a crankshaft in 1 piece. But I’m no technician of course.  I chose the ”Inferior” installation method using Loctite, considering the special tool for flattening the bottom bracket shell too large an investment at this stage. I must admit I was a bit nervous here. My greatest concern was possible play on the shaft after mounting. With previous generations of bottom brackets, the desired tightness of the bearings on the crankshaft could be reached by loosening or tighten the bearing housing, but with the pre-assembled bearings on the Ultra Torque, there is no such possibility. The bottom bracket cups need to be mounted first, tightened, and after fixation, the 2 crank units have to be placed outside-inward and fastened together with a special bolt. At 42 Nm to be precise. Meaning everything needs a perfect fit with no possibility for adjustment. There is the crinkle thrust washer which compensates for the variation in bottom bracket shell widths found on various framesets, but I was somehow still worried that this would not entirely prevent play on the axle. So I was pretty much relieved to find a tight and perfectly balanced, smooth running crankshaft 48 Loctite drying hours later. The major challenges were completed now..