My "new" 1980s Vitus 979

 

Vitus 979 as purchased.

Some of you who have been following me for a long time or know me, either in person or through the internet cycling world, might be looking at this and thinking "Wait a minute, isn't that ALUMINUM?!?!?!?  I thought you were a steel frame fan!"

 Well, both are true.  The vast majority of bikes I have owned and ridden have been steel framed.  Many years ago I owned a mid-80s Cannondale road bike, but found it very responsive to hard pedaling, but also really stiff and harsh on anything but the smoothest surfaces.  Granted, it was an early Cannondale, back when they were still figuring out how best to create good riding frames with oversized, welded aluminum tubing.

A contemporary of the early Cannondales was the Vitus series of aluminum frames, but they were built in an entirely different manner.  Using tubing of the same outside diameters typically used in steel frames, Vitus chose to use cast aluminum fittings and adhesive to join the tubes together.  This resulted in a very light frame that had a lot more "give" than the Cannondales had, yielding a more supple and comfortable ride.

 

At least, that's what I've read and heard.  I've actually never ridden a Vitus, even now after buying one.  I've almost never bought a bike without at least a short test ride, but the tires on this bike were so rotted out there was no way to give it a try.  But the price was right, and I have wanted to try one out for a long, long time, so I figured it was worth the gamble.  If what I've heard about the bikes is true, I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it, and it will be different enough from my other bikes to be worth adding to my collection.  Worst case scenario, after I fix it up and get it rolling, if I don't like it I'm pretty sure I can make my money back selling it.

So, what are the details of the bike?  I'm not sure what year it was built, as the information I've found about serial numbers is a bit confusing.  I THINK it was most likely built in September of 1984, which would make it a 1985 model year frame.  The components, on the other hand, seem to date from 1986, so either the frame was sold through a bike shop and built up to a customer's specs some time later, or for some reason it sat around the Vitus factory for a year before being built up.  If I were to guess, the former seems more likely.  I've got another bike, my Mercian (see "Beautiful British Bicycle") the frame for which was built in 1977 and shipped from the UK factory to a shop in California, where it was eventually sold with a group of components dated 1981.

600 cranks w/Biopace rings

The drivetrain and brakes are all from the Shimano 600 SIS group from 1986.  This was the first generation of the 600 group to have indexed ("click") shifting, with six sprockets in back and two chainrings in front.  Speaking of chainrings, this was the age of Biopace, an oval chainring configuration that was claimed to improve power transfer through the rotation of the crank.  It's an idea that has come and gone from the bike industry a number of times, but it never seems to catch on for very long.  I might keep it on the bike to start with, just to give it a serious try.  I've done short test rides on bikes with Biopace over the years, but never long enough to really get a good feel for it.  I might like it, or I might not, but it's worth trying.

600 rear brake.

The wheels are Shimano 600 hubs laced to Mavic GP4 dark anodized rims for "sewup" (also called tubular) tires.  The GP4 was probably one of, if not the most popular such rim in the 80s.  Strong and light, it worked well for training and some levels of actual competition.  As mentioned in other posts, this type of tire is a bit trickier to mount and deal with, as they are glued to the rims.  I have a couple of other bikes that currently have sewup wheels on them, and for now at least, I'm going to keep these wheels the way they are, but with a new set of tires.  The bike came with Panaracer Practice tires, but I could literally put my finger through large gashes in the sidewalls see the back side of the base tape.  At this point I'm looking at putting some Vittoria Rally tires on the bike, which are pretty basic but good tires.

In addition, the handlebars and stem are Nitto, a brand I really like, so I'll be keeping those.  They had "aero" style bars bolted on, but I'm taking those off, as they really aren't appropriate for the riding I like to do, and frankly look ugly to me.  Pedals are and old set of Speedplay Zeros, which I will swap out for something compatible with Shimano SPD cleats, since that's the "clipless" pedal system I use.  Finally, the saddle is some old, somewhat worn suede-over-plastic model that will be replaced most likely with a Brooks saddle of some kind.

You can learn more about Vitus 979 bikes here:

Light & Legendary: Vitus 979

 And my Flickr album is here:

1985? Vitus 979

1963 Witcomb update

 Well, it's slow going, as I don't have a huge amount of spare time, but I'm chipping away at cleaning up and overhauling that Witcomb track bike I shared a few weeks ago.  It's pretty remarkable how well it's cleaning up.  It seems there was just a fine layer of filth over a bike in otherwise great shape.

I stripped all the parts off the frame, and gave it a good washing, first with diluted Dawn dish soap.  For the more stubborn bits of grunge, I used Simple Green, and in a few spots, a bit of denatured alcohol.  I had to be very sparing with the latter, or it would take up paint.  For the chromed parts of the rear triangle and front fork, I used Quick Glo, which works really well for cleaning up chrome and making it shine.  You can see the results below.

Before:

After:

I've also cleaned up most of the components, and have unlaced the wheels, since I won't be using the original sewup rims.  The front rim had a nasty dent in it, so it had to be replaced for sure, and since I was going to have to re-lace at least once wheel, I figured I'd swap out to clincher rims.  Clincher tires are just easier to deal with, and less expensive too.

Before:

 

 

After:

One odd thing I discovered is the bar tape was originally blue, and appears to have been two different shades of blue.  I never would have guessed this from what it looked like on the bike, but as I stripped it off the original colors were revealed.

There were a few paint chips, and rather than try to find a good match, I decided to just cover the bare steel with clear nail polish.  I'll be waxing the frame with Meguiar's carnauba wax, and then the next step is to start putting it all back together again.  I need to lace up the wheels of course, using the original hubs, new spokes, and a set of Mavic MA-2 rims a friend is sending me.  One oddity is that the bike has 32 spokes in the front, 36 in the rear.  Most bikes of this era had the same number of spokes in both wheels, but the British did things a bit differently sometimes.  It does make sense, as the rear wheel sees more stress than the front.

Stay tuned for more updates as things progress.

Photo album, with new additions:

1963 Witcomb Track Bike

A teaser...

 ... of a post to come.

Vitus 979, on the roof of my VW.

Vitus 979, on the roof of my VW.

Just picked this up today, and I'm looking forward to fixing it up and getting it rolling.  Something different for me - a bonded (aka glued) Vitus 979 from the 80s!  

I've been curious about these since they were first introduced in the late 70s, and ridden by a number of pros, probably most notably Sean Kelly of Ireland.  This one showed up locally on Facebook, at a price that seemed reasonable, in a size that will fit me.  The tires (yet another bike with sewups!) are completely shot, so I couldn't take it for a test ride, but I've heard enough about these that I figured it was worth the risk.

Stay tuned for more news on the bike as I get a chance to start working on it, and then riding it!

Light & Legendary: Vitus 979

 

My 1981 Austro-Daimler Vent Noir II

Here's another one of those "bikes of my youthful dreams" machines.  As regular readers (are there any these days?) know, back when I was a teenager growing up in the DC area, one my favorite pastimes was visiting bike shops.  We had some really great ones, from basic "mom and pop" stores to ones that catered to real aficionados, with high end racing and touring bikes.  It  really was the classic "kid in a candy shop" kind of situation, but the "candy" cost way more than I could ever afford back then.

1976 A-D catalog

On one of my visits to College Park Bicycles, I spotted a really sharp looking bike from a company I really didn't know much about - an Austro-Daimler Vent Noir.  This was the first version of the bike, which came in a striking all black finish, with gold lettering and trim, and gold rims.  It also featured the first version of Shimano's Dura Ace component group, anodized in black to match the bike.  Vent Noir means "black wind" in French, thus the color theme.  Back then, there just weren't very many dealers for the brand, so it was a fun surprise to see one, and one so eye-catching.

A few years later, at the same shop, I spied a newer version of the same bike, the Vent Noir II.  While I'm sure others will disagree, I found the new version even more beautiful than the original.  The frame was treated in a "smoked chrome" finish that was really remarkable, and like nothing I had ever seen.  The component group had also changed, to Campagnolo, the brand that was the "top dog" in road cycling back then.  On the Vent Noir II, they used the Nuovo Gran Sport group, rather than the higher end Nuovo Record or top of the line Super Record.  Functionally the differences aren't really all that great, and even the finish and appearance, while not as spiffy as the Record groups, was pretty darned nice.  The one exception is the rear derailleur, which is really rather homely for a Campy piece.  It works just fine, but I understand why some folks back in the day substituted either a Nuovo Record unit, or something from another brand entirely.  If you go back and look at the post about my Mercian, you'll see the original owner specced the Nuovo Gran Sport group, but got the lovely Huret Jubilee derailleur instead.

Craig's List photo of Vent Noir II

I kept my eye open for a nice, used Vent Noir (either version) for many years, but they just aren't that common, and finding one in a 62cm or thereabouts wasn't easy.  Fast forward to 2016, when I found a Craigs List ad for one in Fredericksburg, VA, about an hour and a half (depending on traffic) south of me.  The photos looked good, so I took the drive down to see it.  For a bike as old as it was, it was in really remarkable shape, and a quick test ride confirmed that I would enjoy riding it for years.  On top of all that, the price was fair, so we closed the deal pretty quickly.


Once I got it home and got a closer look at it, I was even more impressed with the overall condition.  Most of the decals were in good shape, with only a few spots where they had been scraped off, none bad enough to really bother me.  It's an old bike, so a little patina doesn't bother me.  Mechanically, it was in very good shape too, and about the only thing mechanically I decided to replace was the brake and shifter cables and housing.  As "correct" as it would be to have kept the original parts there, I'm a fan of functionality, and a set of new, modern cables and teflon lined housing definitely made things work better all around.

The other things I decided to change were the various "contact points" - saddle, bar wrap, and pedals.  The bike came with a cheap plastic saddle with crappy foam, so that got replaced right away with a Brooks B17 Special with copper rivets in the honey brown color.  To match that, I also used matching Brooks leather bar wrap in honey as well.  That color really complements the smoked chrome frame color!  Aside from missing a dust cap, the Campy pedals were fine, but the "quill" design does not work with my big feet, so off they came, replaced by a set of double sided SPD compatible pedals.  I like riding in SPD sandals, so that was an easy choice.  I have more "correct" looking pedals and toe clips I can use if the spirit moves me, though.

Finally, the last thing I changed was the tires.  It came to me with a set of low end Continental Ultra Sports, in 700x23 size, which are pretty narrow and harsh riding for my tastes.  It will come as no surprise to those who know me that I swapped those out for a set of Japanese Panaracer Paselas, in 700x28.  I really like those tires, because they look great with the tan, skin wall sidewalls, and they ride great too.  Much smoother than the Contis, but still plenty "fast" for me.  I could probably fit a wider 32mm tire, but for this bike the the 28s just seem right.

The finishing touch was a Carradice Barley saddlebag in olive green with brown straps, which again just looks great with the finish on the frame.  I think all in all it's a really classy looking bike, not really "flashy" at first glance, but beautiful when you stop to look.  And how does it ride?  Great!  Smooth, light, and fast rolling, and it handles really well too.  It's more at the "race" end of the spectrum than some of my bikes, but not to much so that it's twitchy of uncomfortable.  Having finally gotten my hands (and butt) on one after all those years, my early desire to own one seems well founded.

Here she is, after the changes I made, except for the pedals.

Here's my Flickr photo album for the bike:

1981 Austro-Daimler Vent Noir II

And here are a few online resources about the bike and brand that I found really helpful and informative:

Austro-Daimler: The Bicycle That The Owner Of A Bösendorfer Imperial Piano Would Ride

Bikes to Like: Ritchie’s 1979 Austro-Daimler Vent Noir II

Classic Austro-Daimler Bicycles

In the shop: Austro-Daimler Vent Noir

1979 Austro Daimler Vent Noir II

1976 Austro Daimler Vent Noir

By the way, if anyone has a source, online or physical, for a 1981 Austro-Daimler catalog showing the Vent Noir II, I'd love to see it.

I should mention that Austro-Daimler was actually one label of a company called Steyr-Daimler-Puch which produced bikes under the names Steyr, Austro-Daimler, and Puch.  In the US, it seemed there were more Puchs than the others, but that might have just been in my area.  The Steyr labeled bikes I've seen have all been utilitarian three speed "city bikes" much like the old English Raleigh Sports and similar bikes.  They also built bikes for Sears in the 60s under their J.C. Higgins, Ted Williams, and Free Spirit labels, including one model with 531 tubing and Campagnolo components.  Yes, from Sears!  There are other folk who know a lot more about that chapter than I do, so you might do some searching if you're really interested.