In a message dated 12/10/2005 12:50:18 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, Steven Maasland writes:
A short while ago I pointed out a Masi bike that Sssspeedster was selling on ebay at what I thought was a cheap "buy it now" price. In that case, the bike sold very quickly. This time, I believe that his price expectations are somewhat too high for the bike but I would like to hear more about this particular bike.
http://ebay.com/
Does anybody have any information about age? Has anybody ever seen a similar bike?
I have the same identical decal set up for sale on ebay right now, but up until now had never seen them on a bike. My guess is that the bike was built in the early to mid 80's. Anybody? Does this decal set designate a special model? Was this decal set only used for custom builds (the one being sold has number pegs, which to the best of my knowledge were always special order).
Steven;
I'd like to know more about that decal set myself.
It looks like an older race bike that has had a makeover. The most important clues are the long dropouts, the twin plate crown, and the plain fluted stays, all of which Alberto was pretty much done with by 1975 (he may have backtracked to one or more for a bit... not unusual to occasionally see fluted stays on a '76, for example... but all three at once definitely points to an older bike).
Also, there's the absence of a BB date code, which one begins to see with some consistency on Alberto's bikes in early 1975. The long dropouts make me suspect that this bike's even older than the last one that Kauzo jumped on, but not by much.
The braze-on front derailleur is probably the bike's newest feature, something Alberto began using around 1980 or 81, so I'd assume that to be the earliest date of the makeover.
No getting around the fact that the bike's overpriced. But it was the same with the last one... sssspeedster started it high, got no bids and relisted it a week later for a more reasonable amount. For the right price, this could be a nice project... probably the hardest part of doing a proper '74 twin plate restoration is finding those engraved Masi ttt bars, which this one has (as well as the panto'ed stem).
Bob Hovey
Columbus, GA