[CR]McLean picked up

I drove 750 miles round trip on Saturday to pick up the McLean bike I mentioned last week. The bike was a personal bike of a pawnshop owner named Larry Bress in Norfolk Va. I was pleasantly surprised to find the frame in fine shape under a poor repaint although the equipment is very spotty. The Bio-Pace cranks, early Shimano 600 platform pedals, plastic covered saddle, bottom dollar tires and indexed derailleurs have got to go! Larry called the dealer who sold the bike and he remembered the frame was Columbus SL. The rifled steerer confirmed Columbus but this is a 57cm touring frame and could be SP. My original McLean Silk Hope was SP.

The frame has all the standard features shown in the 1982 catalog at http://classicrendezvous.com/USA/mclean_main.htm with seat stay rack mounts and two sets of waterbottle braze ons on the down tube. The Cinelli lugs, fork crown and BB shell all give a very solid look to the frame. On first looking at the frame I thought the brazing and lugwork were not up to standard. Closer inspection showed the paint job was very inconsistent and bordering on runs at the lug edges. When new McLeans showed up at Bicycle Renaissance in NYC a mechanic and framebuilder named Moy Wong and I would take turns inspecting them for about half an hour to see if we could find any flaw or blemish, then compare notes. This was a game to test our eyes as they were virtually perfect. In this case mediocre paint (in a terrible tricolor) obscures the metalwork. McLean's paint really shows the underlying lugwork. See in particular the photo's of Ken Wallace's frame in the webpage above.

Dale is going to eventually repaint this one, probably in "Wimbleton White". It is great to have a McLean again and so much fun to look at the webpage and remember all the little details about the frames. Thanks Dale.

Joe Bender-Zanoni