Steve Maas, Long Beach, California, USA
September, 2004
I've always wanted a chromed bike. This Rossi showed up on eBay, and it had a certain appeal to me. I've seen plenty of chrome Paramounts for sale, but, as much as I like Paramounts, somehow they never had the same attraction. The same problem I have with a lot of the well-know makes: they don't really tell you anything you don't already know.
So, I got the Rossi. Apparently it is from 1980, made by a small frame shop in Italy. They certainly aren't common. I've never seen one, and there is no entry for Rossi in the Classics Rendezvous web site. This really is no surprise; Italy has always had a huge number of these small shops, and it's impossible to catalog all of them.
I. Evaluation
The bike itself is in remarkably nice condition, especially considering its age. The frame artwork is extraordinary, and the chrome is also in fine shape. It really won't need any great amount of work to get it into shape, notwithstanding my usual anal-retentiveness about maintenance. Apparently, it has not been ridden much.
The bike uses mostly Rino components: drive train, seatpost, and stem. The brakes are Modolo Flash. The Rino components do not have the finish of some of the upper-end lines, but are still nice and--most importantly--work well. I especially like the partially anodized chainrings and etched and anodized stem. Most interesting is the aluminum headset, which is visible in the pictures. I have no idea what kind it is; it has no markings. It is probably somewhat newer than the rest of the bike, because of its roller bearings riding on steel-insert races. Roller-bearing headsets are a 90s kind of thing.
The components--along with the Columbus Aelle tubing--mark the bike as lower end of the upper end, if you get my point. For this reason, it probably is not a bike that holds high interest among the classic-bike snobs. Still, I think that the whole combination is exceptionally nice. The frame is well made; for example, look at the clean coving of the seat stays at the rear dropouts, pantographing, and the neatness of the seat lug. The workmanship of a chrome bike has to be good; you can hide a lot of evil under paint, but not under chrome. Finally, functionality: the components and the bike itself, as a whole, work as well as any of my Campagnolo-Record chariots.
Below are some pictures of the bike as I received it, including one from the original eBay auction. To view a large version of a picture, click on the thumbnail. Use the back button of your browser to return to this page.
As usual, I changed a couple of things. One nice thing about a bike that is not one of the "holy" marques: I don't feel any great responsibility to maintain or restore it in any particular way. I can do whatever interests me. I decided to replace the Modolo Flash brakes with a set of Modolo Speedy brakes I've had in my parts stash for some time. The Speedy brakes are finished a little better, and, unlike the Flash, have the correct Modolo pad holders. (I installed Matthauser pads, though.)
I fitted a seven-speed freewheel to make it a little more rideable (required respacing the hub somewhat). This definitely is outside the timeframe of the bike, but occasionally it makes sense to nod toward rideability instead of period-correctness. After all, it's the nature of these machines to evolve over time, and I don't think that an extra sprocket ruins its mystique. A SRAM PC-48 chain worked somewhat better with the new freewheel. I replaced the cables and fitted red, Teflon-lined sheaths. A nice accent, which picked up the red in the frame artwork. Similarly, I installed red and black bar tape and new generic brake hoods. The bike did not come with pedals; I put on a set of MKS, a Campagnolo copy.
The bike apparently took a good hit in shipping, which collapsed one of the rear dropouts enough to prevent installing the wheel. I was able to bend it open and realign the dropout and derailleur hanger. No permanent damage.
I pulled the crank and fork, and I relubricated the bottom bracket and headset bearings.
I discovered that the bike has tubular tires! I didn't even think to ask, not that it would have changed my desire to buy it. Generally, I don't mess with tubular tires, since they are not terribly practical, and all my bikes must be practically rideable. Still, I suppose I could live with one tubular-tire bike in my fleet, and this should logically be it. I bought a pair of nice Vittoria tubulars on eBay, installed them, and retained the originals as spares. (The original tires are in the pictures below.)
Before installing new tires, I retensioned and retrued the wheels. They needed it. Several spokes were slack, and both wheels, while reasonably true, benefited from a little tweaking.
Of course, I went at it with Simichrome polish and got the whole frame shining spectacularly.
Finally, I installed a more period-appropriate seat, a Selle San Marco Concor. It was in pretty poor shape when I received it. I cleaned it, touched up the scuffs along the edge with leather paint, and finally oiled it with Neetsfoot oil. Now, it looks really sharp, and it complements the bike much better than the beat-up modern seat it came with. The last picture, below, shows the new seat.
I also found a chrome Silca pump and a Campagnolo umbrella clip to hold it. I need some kind of pump, since there the space below the seat is taken up with a tire instead of a pack with tire-changing tools and CO2 inflator. A chrome pump is perfect for this bike.
III. Maiden Voyage
I took the bike out for a quick, ten-mile shakedown cruise around the neighborhood on Saturday, September 25, 2004. At the time, I didn't have a spare tubular, so I was afraid to go far from home. The bike's maiden voyage was on the following Monday, my standard tour de Long Beach, a 30-mile loop around the city. (At that time, I still had no spare, but I made sure that my wife would be available to rescue me if necessary.)
I'm enjoying this bike; it's a really nice ride, fits me perfectly, and generates plenty of comments at the coffee shop.