Kimmo's Hotrod - 90s Avanti Giro Pro Series

Bike came with Syncros BB with broken lockring and thrashed BB threads, hence Velo Orange BB. Frame stripped of fugly brown paint, shifter bosses trimmed flush, dropouts radiused, welds tidied etc. Found crack in top of head tube, 6mm trimmed off to eliminate. DS rear dropout 2mm further from centreline, wheel un-dished a bit to accommodate.

I originally built it up with 600 170mm cranks and black Truvative rings which looked sweet, but then I scored the 175mm Campys, which are a better size for me. Doesn't look quite as cool without the black rings, but oh well.

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Update: scored some cactus Ultegra 9spd STIs for ten bucks and overhauled them (had to upgrade my shift housing to Jagwire for the shorter cable pull), scored a sweet DA chain and swisscheese Ultegra cassette in pretty good nick for next to nothing too : )

Also made a neat little mounting for the rear light.

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Update 2: rebuilt the wheels with some sweet semi-aero Wheelsmith spokes, and replaced the cassette body with a nicer scalloped one - which was fail, because excessive runout caused autoshifting, so I went back to the old one. A 19mm tyre on the front completes the wheel improvements. Actually, a bit of solder taped onto the rim under the tube on the front is the finishing touch, putting a stop to the ugly pendulum effect when the wheel's lifted... the sweetness of it is worth the extra grams, even at the rim. Smaller, lighter tyre more than makes up for it.

I also trimmed 7mm off the bottom of the headtube, re-radiused the weld behind it, and radiused the bit of weld on my stem that was hitting the locknut to get it another 4mm lower. Some trick Aerozine chainring bolts both add subtle bling with the cute laser etching, and banish the crappy slots on the back for a 6mm allen. Much slicker speedo cable routing done, with a plug and socket grafted in behind the brake caliper for maintenance.

This bike nears perfection, in terms of upgrading it while preserving it as an example of its time; I just started with a modern bike so that'll be getting the bulk of my attention soon. However, this one could still use some finishing touches; ally bolts for cable stops and guide, some Ergos instead of the damn STIs (happy to use a Shiftmate with either the Shimano derailleur or a Campy one), and I've been thinking about getting some transfers made, re-doing the brushed finish and clear-coating.

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Update 3: Bought some Ergos and A ShiftMate. Damn, Ergos are sexy. Found some cool carbon-look bar tape when I was installing em. Scored a pretty decent seat too. Then my uncle gave me a bunch of 7700 gear and the A-Class rear wheel, so further pimpage was in order... sourced a way cool Shimano front to go with it (love those babies, with the paired inverted spokes using the width of the rim to increase bracing angle). Got some gorgeous 175mm 7700 cranks waiting for a BB, but I'm hating on the lame flaking clearcoat... thinking about polishing and anodising them grey, and having the Dura-Ace logo laser etched in em... felt compelled to throw the 600s with black rings back on in the meantime.

This bike is a weapon with these wheels. I'm loving it : D

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Update 4: So now there's a new vision; fully worked - the bike will wait at this penultimate stage while I sort out the means of finishing it... meantime, the segmented housing is pretty bling; it gets comments from those with an eye for detail. Got another R540 for the back, and banished the rusty old spokes for pimpin' CX-Rays, some very sexy slivers of SS. A threadless fork was procured (bit of a boat anchor though), and the 31.4mm seat tube reamed out to 31.6, both of which enabled a big step - upgrading to sweet, sweet Thomson 31.8 stem and layback post for much street creds. Many hours were spent searching for the sexiest seat clamp, and the seat tube was trimmed 10mm, with the adjacent weld re-profiled for clearance, and even a slight radius added inside the clamp where it meets the beginning of the weld. Fully slammed, super slick.

The Thomson stem is a pretty awesome bit of kit, but comes with silly 3mm bolts, which are fine for the steerer clamp but totally marginal for the bar clamp, which is probably why they give you some carbon assembly paste with it, which I had to use with my ally bars! Anyway, it works, so whatevs - the important thing is the bling value and 31.8 spec. Oh yeah, a Thomson sleeve was used as well. The Oval bars are really light and stiff; ally bars don't get much more impressive.

I have a pair of BR-7700s, one with a front spindle in place of the rear, and the pair is split across two bikes, this one and a modern bike. So I procured a pair of BR-7400s (scored em cheap cause they were listed as 7200), and cut and tapped the front spindle into a rear. Then I swapped the QRs between a 7700 and a 7400, so this bike has the old QRs on both brakes; I've made a different pair of pairs. It's my ultimate Shimano answer to Campy's single-pivot option (although a humbler version has been my setup since DPs came along).

The Cutter carbon braze-on mount is a slick bit of kit costing 1/3 the price of the original unit it's copying, and also allows me to run a bigger rear tyre, but it's a damn fiddle to set up and is a tad flexy... still, once it's dialled in that's it, and it doesn't seem to hurt the shifting. Also, it said the coolest thing on the packaging: 'Lifetime warranty. If this thing sucks, send it back any time.' Pretty good PR. Anyway, it allowed the use of my FD-7700, but that had a really worn cage (nickel-plated ally), so I got another one.

The crankset, what can I say. The FC-7800 is the sexiest HT2 crankset ever made, with its non-dead-octopus classic styling and blind clamp bolt holes. Still, not a fan of the rings and the lack of heel clearance inherent to HT2, so it's a placeholder. I scored some lovely NOS 600 pedals (including the rare cleats), and then found some DA toeclips in my size, but I had to pay AU5 for them... ouch.

Update 5 will consist of an Easton EC90 Aero full carbon (@1"!) fork (350g) and FC-7700 and BB-7700 with Ti bolts (I think I'll use the BBB rings again), but this is all pending a tidy-up and polishing of the frame, which will be anodised with a vertical fade from near-black up to pewter or so along the top tube, with the fork stripped and painted to match. The Avanti brand will be etched on the downtube and 'Kimmo's Giro Pro Hotrod' etched along the top tube. The 7700 Dura-Ace cranks came with a crappy clearcoat (shame, Shimano), and the ones I have are pretty ratty, so I'm going to rectify that with polishing and anodising, with the Dura-Ace logo etched and anodised, probably oversize, maybe inverted (with the cranks done like Ultegra Ice Grey, and the logo silver). It'll be the tits.