Re: [CR]Pegoretti Quiz

> Okay, so earlier this season a pal of mine and I got a deal on
> a pair of Luiginos. He'll stay unnamed. We learned that Gita had
> a few non-custom bikes in the blue color that you see on the ByKyle
> site. We got them from another dealer who is a nice guy and wanted
> to sell some bikes...My bike, which is sitting here in the living room,
> looks exactly like those on the ByKyle site. I think Gita had three
> and we bought two of them. I could be wrong about that.
>
> I had no illusions that this bike was all old school and classic. I
> asked Richie about awhile ago and he said what he said to everyone here.
> In addition to the features that Richie has noted as the primary bits of
> homage to the past, I would only add the Campagnolo 1010B dropouts (which
> he pointed out to me).
>
> There are a few things to say about the frame that may be of interest
> to the Classicists but I took the bike to be a pretty nice example of
> a _modern_ lugged steel bike built with a few details to remind us
> of things of yore. What's wrong with that? So, because I took it to be actually a more modern bike
> I didn't put old parts on it. I thought about doing it all Super Record
> but this _isn't_ really an old bike, with its OS tubing and
> modern cast lugs, it's an homage of sorts with clear
> concessions to modernity, no? Mine has Campagnolo Record 9 speed Ergo
> and, like a Sachs or other great bikes built with classic considerations,
> this bike looks to my eye "appropriate" this way. I have old bikes
> that I love, I have new bikes with old stuff, so I did this one another way.
>
> One really surprising feature of the frame is that it is unusually light.
> I mean, noticeably---its some sort of Dedaccai MCDlotsofnumbersletters
> tubing and I was expecting nothing like this. Built up it must be well
> under 20 pounds though I don't weigh bikes and don't really care, it's just
> an interesting side note. Pegoretti may have thought about this and
> built it this way, he likes light frames and I think he thought of
> this bike as everything a tig'd highzoot steel bike of his could do
> only with lugs and a nod to the past.
>
> The sparse lugs are nice, clean looking, but don't seem to have
> undergone any special treatment. I mean, they don't look much worked
> over or filed. I bet they came out of the cast pretty clean to begin
> with. The paint has some grit and unfinished business about it, sort
> of typical Euro-paint in the way that they don't seem to care about this
> quite the way we do. Not even remotely close to a JB or Baylis,
> fergetaboutit. But I really love the color. It's easy on the eyes,
> looks nice (and shades differently) in all sorts of light, plus I am
> a sucker for anything close to french blues.
>
> The threaded stem means I can get a great bar height without showing
> lots of stem. Oh, and the fork crown created a problem because it
> is some slightly larger diameter than true moderns. I had to use a
> bit of dremel tooling to get a regular Campagnolo headset to fit.
> It wouldn't seat properly. Now it's fine. Oh yes, and the rear dropouts are
> slightly off so that one screw has to be a millimeter ahead of the
> other to get the wheels to seat properly. But other than that,
> no problem. Cookie cutter bikes, gimmicks, whatever, I have to
> tell you that Pegoretti builds bikes that ride _fantastically_.
> It's not aesthetically perfect and nothing to compare to a Sachs,
> Baylis, Rivendell, or Mariposa, but it's pretty neat in its own way,
> not too common, and a _great_ ride. I have a set of the fancy
> Nitto bottle cages, a neat Regal saddle and a few touches that
> make it seem a bit more traditional (Mavic 451 brakes, the rest
> is Record). The cable guides on the bb shell are really handsome
> and the bike's geometries are neutral and forgiving.
> Anybody want to know anything about it?
>
> It's no great shakes in comparison to Those That Shake Great
> but it's pretty neat to my eye.
>
> Douglas Brooks
> Canandaigua, NY