In a message dated 12/12/05 12:13:28 PM, patrick-ajdb@sbcglobal.net writes:
>
> So Bob, is it your contention that proper twin-plate Masi restoration
> requires engraved Masi 3t bars? I guess that's were this started off, s
o what's
> your take?
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> Dave Patrick
>
> Chelsea, Michigan
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Well, as I said, I was probably a bit hasty in my use of the words "proper restoration" which one could construe to define the one and only way. I re ally didn't mean that, perhaps a better term would have been "complete factory restoration" or perhaps "reconstruction of a complete bike as produced by th e Vigorelli shop."
Since no production records seem to have survived, I guess we'll never know what percentage of Alberto's 74 bikes were complete or frameset only. My o wn opinion is based on shop photos from the period or close to the period, as well as nearly complete unrestored examples that have surfaced, some of whic h have made their way over to the US. A particularly fine example is here:
http://www.theracingbicycle.com/
Another is at Speedbicycles.com (the site is built with frames so you'll hav e to navigate to it manually.. it's in the Museum section).
In both cases, you can see that Alberto lavished a significant amount of car e on these bikes... in addition to the special components, you can see the dab s of yellow paint that have been applied to cable ends and the bolt ends of th e brakes and cable clamps. Several other bikes like this have surfaced so I
think it would be safe to assume that this is not a "bike show" configuratio n.
As for a person who is embarking on a restoration, beginning with a frameset
or complete bike with a mishmash of components that postdate the frame, I believe that his benchmark is most often the complete bike as produced by th e manufacturer, using components that the builder selected. It was in this l ight that I made my original statement... that the bike in question might be a go od buy as a restoration project since it had a set of these increasingly hard t o find bars that Alberto equipped the complete bikes with. I did not mean to imply that there is anything at all wrong with a 1974 Italian GC that does N OT have these bars... it could very well have been built up that way from a bar e frame by an original owner and there's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping it that way, or in emulating such a build in a later restoration.
Bob Hovey
Columbus GA