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