In 2015 my preparations started with finding the right bike. I used to have a Bianchi road bike when I was 16 but I gave it away many years ago (it wouldn’t be allowed in L’Eroica though as it was built in the early 90s). In Austria the hype around vintage bicycles has only started a couple of years ago and I believe many former owners – me included – wished they had never given away their old bikes. With all the hype prices have gone up considerably and it’s getting harder to find the right bike at an affordable price. This holds particularly true for Italian classics such as Bianchi, Legnano, Masi, De Rosa or Pinarello as well as components by Campagnolo.
While many vintage cycling enthusiasts prefer an Italian build I was more focussed on finding something British. I used to live in the UK for three years and therefore I’ve always had a bit of an affinity for Britishness. Also, from my experience, it’s easier to find larger frames from British or Dutch frame builders because they produced larger quantities of 58+ frames than their Italian peers.
At the time when I registered for Eroica I did not own a vintage road bike so I put myself under pressure as I had to find one before October. What I wanted was a bike in original condition without (too many) modifications. There are many nice bikes out there all clean and shiny but at the same time lacking a true vintage look. In my point of view if a bike is 35+ years old the traces of time can be visible. In fact, they should be visible!
I finally found one on eBay which looked very promising. The seller told me that he was the first owner of the bike and he still had the invoice including his name serving as proof. It’s a fairly standard (not top of the line) Raleigh made of 531 Reynolds Steel. It has braze-ons for mudguards although those have never been mounted. What makes the bike a bit special is the fact that it has been built at the Carlton factory in Worksop where Raleigh produced its higher quality lightweight road bikes. It was probably one of the last ones as it was built in 1981, the same year when the Carlton factory closed its doors forever.
The previous owner hasn’t had used the bike in years but it was in surprsingly good shape when it arrived. The frame showed some signs of wear but I was particularly impressed with the Japanese Suntour components that were used on this bike. The front derailleur is a Suntour Cyclone whereas the rear one is a Vx. There was no need to adjust the derailleurs; after all the years the gears switched very smoothly and there was no weird noise at all. I did some research on the Internet and found out that Suntour was quite a brand in those days producing high quality components and sometimes even being at the forefront of pioneering inventions in cycling technology (e.g. slant-parallelogram rear derailleur). The brakes on my Raleigh Competition were made by Swiss company Weinmann which was quite a common brand in the 70s and 80s but vanished from the scene in the early 90s when they couldn’t keep up with new developments in the cycling world.
The seller told me that the only things that weren’t original were the handlebars (he preferred an Italian 3ttt Competizione) and the saddle (Brooks B17). These parts had been changed at the shop where he bought the bike and the extra cost incurred can be seen on the original invoice. I received the bike around 10th of September which means I only had about three weeks time in order to get it in shape for L’Eroica. What I eventually did was changing the tyres (those looked really bad), the handlebar tape and the freewheel. After some research I went for a pair of Challenge Paris Roubaix tubulars with 300 TPI and for the handlebar I used a Velox Tressostar Cloth tape made of cotton. I replaced the original freewheel with a nice slightly used Suntour New Winner Ultra 13-28 from 1984 which gave me some better gearing options in the steep Tuscan hills. I left everything else as it was; I didn’t even change the brake pads although they seemed to be quite hard and worn. In other words: I was ready!
Next chapter: My first Eroica ride