After a cold day yesterday, it is warmer today, and I am finally getting around to cleaning up the 70's or early 80's Romic touring bike I bought in July. I think the post earliier today about the eBay Romic may have motivated me.
As mentioned in my below post from July, it has rather cool GB bar plugs, but also marked "Paris". The concensus at the time was that these have no connection to Gerry Burgess of GB UK, but are much too old to have been produced by Gilles Berthoud, who is not that old a man.
Also mentioned at the time was the bar covering, which is made to look like sewn on leather bar tape, but is really rubber push on stuff, like GrabOns, only harder rubber, not foam. At the time several people said this stuff was nothing special, some thought it downright nasty. Any different opinion? Is this stuff worth saving? And assuming it were, anyone know how to get it off the bars without destroying it? In the past, I've never tried to save used GrabOns, not only becasue I never liked them and because they broke up with age, but because it looked pretty hard to remove them once they had been on a while. So I just cut them off and was done with it. The stem on the bike is much too short, so even if I reuse the bars, the covering has to come off at least one side to change the stem. Anyone know a way of doing this without destroying the bar covering, or is this an impossible undertaking?
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA
> From: Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net>
\r?\n> Subject: [CR]Berthoud? Bar Covering
\r?\n> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Thursday, July 17, 2008, 8:55 PM
\r?\n> Received today this bike:
\r?\n>
\r?\n>
\r?\n> http://ebay.com/
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Those who know me know I am a cheapass, so a complete
\r?\n> touring bike for less than 1/3 the price of a Limited
\r?\n> Edition Ti Brooks Swallow, or $30 more than a long sleeve
\r?\n> Vintage Velo wool jersey is hard for me to resist.
\r?\n> Especially with the excellent SunShine ProAm wheels and the
\r?\n> equally excellent Sugino Mighty Tour cranks. And I love
\r?\n> Weinmann 500 brakes - everything you need - nothing you
\r?\n> don't.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> What makes this a bit special for me is that Romic was
\r?\n> built by the late Ray Gasorowski in Houston, TX. from who I
\r?\n> bought my daughter's 24" wheel junior road bike and
\r?\n> a custom track frame In The Day. he also repainted a couple
\r?\n> of bike for me. One surprising thing is that the bike has a
\r?\n> foil decal from a shop in Minneapolis. I thought Ray only
\r?\n> sold through shops in Houston and the surrounding area.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Unpacking it I find it has bluish green GB rubber barend
\r?\n> plugs. I thought these were "GB" as in Gerry (or
\r?\n> is it Gary) Burgess, but it also say "Paris".
\r?\n> Does "GB" then mean Giles Berthoud instead? If
\r?\n> so, this raises the issue of the bar coverings. As seen in
\r?\n> the photos, these look similar to perforated sewn-on leather
\r?\n> coverings. But instead, the are rubber. Not the fragile
\r?\n> foam like Grabons, but thick, heavy rubber. Could these bar
\r?\n> coverings be Berthoud as well? If so, I may have to rethink
\r?\n> my initial inclination to cut them off.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Regards,
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Jerry Moos
\r?\n> Big Spring, Texas, USA