Alright kids, get ready for some serious bike porn. I did this a few years ago and still own it. The story goes, back in December 2006 a friend in the Freakbike Militia, West Palm Beach chapter, found this frame in the trash and offered it to me, for free, all I had to do was show up to the Christmas ride and grab it. I did, and took me a few days to realize what I had on my hands. This is where it ended, but lets talk about where it started first.
This next set of photos came from right before I started the process of restoration and somewhere in between all that, racing alley cats in South Florida and drinking like a sailor at pub crawls where I was stupid enough to bring it.
This is the earliest picture of this frame that I have. It was a total mess. At the time I thought it was a 1984 Designer but some careful research later on led me to believe it wasn't.
At the time it would have had a mix-match of the original Shimano 600 and random parts from the junkyard to get it rolling. The whole bike through the entire process of the project was restored by me at Matt's Bicycle Center in Cocoa Beach, which ironically enough this frame may have been originally sold at, Ciocc frames were sold through Ten Speed Drive Imports in the States and this bike shop was called Ten Speed Drive and Irv sold these in his shop, it could have also came from their outlet store in Titusville. I still have a few of the original TSDI stickers I've been hoarding.
Even older pic, pre grip tape. This had 7 speed indexed downtubes at the time. Lots of old school stuff NOS, I wished I had held on to some of this during the restoration
New job meant new toys. This would have been 2008 where the bike really started to take shape. 9 speed in, also because the cheap wheel I slapped on the back was only 124mm spacing, the spindle wasn't wide enough for 9/10 speed so it got new wheels too, cheap FSA RD-220's but they were smooth and got the job done. I rode on this setup for about a year doing alleycat races. Podium'd a few. Did my share of DNFs too lol. I remember a particular race I was mopping the floor with everyone on this and I mean slaughter in the 1st degree until I got tricked into a phantom bonus checkpoint that didn't exist in a Jacksonville alleycat and ended up losing the race.
I do all my own work by the way, in fact the only things I did not do on the final build was lace the wheels and spray the frame
Time for powdercoat, because this is a rider not a shop floor queen and I planned on absolutely thrashing it at alley cat races
After.
I'll never forget this day. I also managed to keep the original chrome I spent a few hours buffing it up and giving it the Mother's treatment. It still wears the original chrome to this day.
wrong decals, didn't know it at the time. Close enough.
Handpainted this. Wasn't too horrible for freehand.
Original 600 bottom bracket back in, repacked the bearings, and has a new spindle the old one was flat-spotted. This attention to detail on the 600 drivetrain would influence me later on to convert the whole thing to 600 Tri-color
A few days before reassembly
Back together and ready to hurt some hipster feelings
Ditched the old Cloud9 cheapie seat and griptape, got a Selle Italia Troy Lee Design and new tape.
Here is where the wheels started really turning on a more modern take on it. As a Christmas present to myself I dropped all of the junkyard stuff and went with 9 speed Ultegra paddles, Flightdeck computer, Sora crank (which wouldn't last long) new brakes, Michelin Pro 2 Race tires, Dura-Ace chain and some other small stuff I'm probably forgetting. I planned to ride it at my first MSBike which was coming up in April 2009. Won my first alleycat race on this setup.
Shiny parts, full 10 speed conversion now. Full 10 speed, on a 20 year old bike at the time.
All of these parts would soon find their way to this bike, a 1986 Tommaso SLX, and the Ciocc frame would hang in my living room for a few years. It was sold when I lost my job, I bought it back from the guy when I found work again, and about 5 years ago I got the itch to put it all back together, but done right this time with old school E36 M3. That's it for now, tomorrow I'll post the period 600 Tri-color build. I spared no expense on it.
I also own this bike too, sold the Spinergys though. It rides on my semi truck and I ride it in between loads, it has had its wheels on the ground in all 48 states, some just to ride 3 or 4 miles to get lunch.
New old stock Campy axle tensioners. I later removed all of the powdercoat off of the drop outs
Period Mavic Open 4's on polished 600 Tri-color 6400 hubs. 36 holes each I'm a fat boy. One of the very few things I did not do by myself. I couldn't find the front hoop by itself in 36h so I bought a wheel with that hoop, lopped the hub off and had it re-laced with the 6400 hub.
It's not exactly period but it's close enough, Tri-color came out in 1992 and I wanted STI since I planned on actually riding it. I had always wanted this particular groupset and now I was on the brink of having it
Also had a Dura-ace 7400 8-speed cluster. It's the only non-600 part on the whole bike, mostly because I couldn't find the 600 cluster and it was free, and I really liked the 25-12 gearing. It's like a semi has 4 hi and 4 low the spacing between 4 and 5 is a noticeable drop.
Challenge Criterium tires, the closest thing I could get to period tires that weren't dry rotted. The tread is the same as the 80's Criterium as well as the manufacturing location, all that changed is the rubber is from Thailand. I also after much sleuthing found a 600 6400 seatpost. Look clipless, which would later change to Dura-ace SPD-SL to keep with the Shimano tribe. Also got the correct decals which later I found were not waterproof the hard way, so it will be stripped down again in the future, new decals and clearcoat.
Full 6400 STI groupset. Everything even found the 600EX chain that was sold with it NOS. Found the tri-color water bottle too, as a finishing touch.
I traded a bunch of Suntour Superbe Pro stuff for it as well as 7 sets of Suntour sealed bearing derailleur pulleys NOS which I later found out I could have sold and bought the whole 6400 set outright off of that alone. Whoops.
Final finishing touches, these made it 150 miles before they fell off.
Lug frame, chrome stays, chrome fork, modern components, i dig it! and of course, always photographed with chain on big ring!
Now we're cooking with the good stuff.
Starting to come together. All bearings have been re-packed at this point. That's almost a NOS 600 BB, the spindle was flawless just had to add axle grease to the bearings. The seller of the 600 groupset went to lengths to clean it for me so I could speed up the build, I usually run everything used through the degreaser but with this build I got lucky.
Here you can see the unorthodox Shimano DA clipless pedals. I didn't know these weren't conventional SPDs so when I got them I had to scramble and find the cleat and a pair of shoes that would accept them, luckily the shoes I already had would take them. They are loosely related to mountain bike egg beaters, roughly the same generation.
I also can't wrap bars for E36 M3 and for a build of this caliber I was happy to buy him a few of his favorite beers if he did it.
done, back to Looks temporarily when I realized I had the wrong cleat lol. I eventually did find the right one and slap the Dura-Ace SPD-SLs back on. This is how the bike looks more or less, today. The frame has probably had over 10k miles logged on it by me, over the course of ownership, and it all started with a rusty throwaway frame on the side of the road in Hollywood, FL
Also found this old pic of me bombing the Jewfish Creek Bridge at MSBike just before Key Largo, tucked in probably well over 40mph. I had more gearing but it was the first day and I wasn't trying to blow my wad before the big pull home. For the longest time and most of this bike's time on my fleet it rode a 53-11 final with a short stint at 56-11 and I could wind them both out.
As I've gotten older and slower, and with an injured ankle, I've opted for 46-12 final and much shorter gearing.
holy kilowatts, batman! 56/11?!?!
In reply to jdogg :
I know zilch about road bikes, but that's a super cool bike & history!
Very nice! Makes me crave a vintage build myself.
In reply to AngryCorvair :
There was a time when I could drive a big angry dinner plate at full chat. On the return leg, on the 53/11 that bike touched 50mph at MSBike and on the 56/11 at an alleycat it knocked on the door of 55 with a strong seabreeze at my back. The 56/11 was nice, you could start off in a lower gear and go straight to it and putz around at pub crawls and social rides. It had a 39 inner granny gear for quick launches off the line, I loved that setup.
The 46/12 now is nice, 172mm crank arms vs. the old 177.5, my knees very much don't miss the dinner plates I used to ride on. Definitely a cruiser but you can still wind it out.
In reply to adam525i (Forum Supporter) :
They are a lot cheaper now than when I did this. I paid top dollar for that 600 setup you can buy it now for a fraction of what I paid.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
The great thing about it is, you don't need to know anything about them to know it's nice and old school.
My racing days are behind me but I still bring it out to social rides and get a lot of questions and people wanting to look at it.
It's like a classic Ferrari, a vintage Rolex or an old Leica camera, bikes like this, your Colnagos, De Rosa, De Bernardi, Bianchi, all these old Italian frames are timeless and they ride great compared to the newer carbon frames. They can be collectors items and they can be riders too.
What crankset in the front and cassette are you running?
In reply to dxman92 :
600 6400 172.5 arms, with 46/39 front rings, 600 6400 bb, Dura-ace 7400 25-12 casette, 8-speed
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