Edward Albert wrote:
I would have to agree with Matthew on this. I have never seen a Colnago super fork crown with both the C around the club and the dots on the side. Did someone, in the refinishing, fill in the dots? Edward Albert
******************
Very cool crown on that bike, but probably not especially anomalous. Colnagos confined to Europe often looked different in certain details from those that were imported to America. I recall a post from one of our Dutch members some years ago, in which he said that in the 1970s and beyond, Colnago would make a bike just about any way you wanted it, if you worked with a dealer who had that kind of relationship with Colnago, or if you were lucky enough to work directly with a factory rep, or Colnago himself. I have an early 70s colnago, for instance, that was originally sold in Europe that has a number of cosmetic features not usually seen on Colnagos of that vintage that came to America.
I had a colnago track bike from the very early 70s that had a crown just like the one on the ebay bike, except, of course, it was a track crown for round blades. But the flower/club inside the C was used at that time on the top of crowns...it would not have been a big deal to make a mold for the road crown that included that feature.
One thing I noticed about the ebay bike: the lugs are faired/smoothed into the tubes in a way usually seen on slightly later colnagos. For some years I owned a colnago from that time that had quite distinct lug-edges, with very little filing, far as I could tell, and very thin original paint. It may be the paint-job has slightly blurred the edges of the lugs on the ebay bike, too.
The ebay bike is very neat..but I sure would have preferred original paint.
Charles Andrews Los Angeles
"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."
John Donne
Meditation 1624