So who were these ICS guys and what was their mission? It all seems a little wierd to me. Back in the glory days of Super Record, I considered myself to be pretty up-to-speed on all things Campy, but I never saw or even heard about any of this ICS stuff until recently. I get the sense that ICS had little to no distribution in the USA, and as far as I can tell they had no presence in US or European racing. So, who were their target customers? As far as I can tell they were going after Swiss and German Captains of Industry with a desire to ride racing bikes and a heartfelt feeling that Campy is nice, but simply not expensive enough. The actual mechanical modifications that ICS made to the SR group seem to be limited to an absurdly elaborate system to prevent derailment from the chainring (and possibly the entanglement of expensive trousers) and an angle-of-the-dangle adjuster for the rear derailleur. The later modification is the closest thing to something useful I've seen from ICS. Oh, well, there were the Bally-approved twin tong toeclips. The rest of the improvements seem to be strictly cosmetic, and in my opinion range from gaudy to outright atrocious. It seems that a lot of the parts had anodizing removed, and other parts were treated to a chrome plating over aluminum, which is something I've seen fail so many times it makes me cringe to see it on a Cinelli stem. Then there's the gold stuff....
The Ebay bike is certainly very attractive, and overall the frame is very sweet, but it does nothing but support my negative perception of ICS. Based on the use of the ICS-modified Campy Record dual pivots, the bike is apparently 1994 or newer. Based on the absence of anything older than the early 1990s, I'd say this bike likely was assembled in 1994. Based on the use of EL OS tubing, I'd say the frame was actually built right around that time. So, what's with the internal gear cable routing and the sadly dated top-of-the-downtube shifter placement? Is it 1981? Indexed shifting, which had been arond for 10 years by the time this bike was made, had put internal routing to bed, and that silly shifter placement is a real commitment to never using integrated shifting, which had already been available (brand S) for several years.
Then there are the cool ICS parts. Known-to-be-quirky internal post expander replacing a conventional binder? Check! Anodizing stripped from rear der to enhance corrosion? Roger! Shifter wingnuts removed to preclude on-road adjustment? Gotcha! Barrel adjuster removed from shifter to confound on-the-fly indexing tweeks? You betcha.
And what's with the little screws on the rear der body? Did ICS remove the rivets to make things easier to remove the rivets, in case the owner ever has to remove the rivets? Why not just wait 'til that's needed... and when is it ever needed? Maybe it's because ICS mounted a stiffer parallelogram spring to overcome the cable friction of the internal routing. That the brakes were modified by ICS sometime in 1994 or later, while the bike lacks the then available floating guide pulley and Exa chainrings is a not what I'd call devotion to detail.... that seems like the sort of stuff that ICS should have been doing to Record parts before Campy finally got around to it.
I have a bike with this vintage of Record parts, and the only modification I found necessary was to file of an annoying little finger-gouging edge on the underside of the brake lever. ICS didn't do that, depsite the fact that they apprently refinished the levers, or at least polished off the anodizing.
The use of bladed spokes, with attendant need to slot the hubs, was really "over" but the vintage or this bike. 32-hole bladed wheels were always "over". The SPDs and DA headset are heretical. The laid back seat angle and pushed-forward saddle suggest a bad frame fit. The handlebar angle is cool, very Sean Yates!
The crank mod is very pretty, and it looks like ICS took the effort to reanodize it.
Tom Dalton Bethlehem PA USA
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