So my friend Daniel Quinones has a buddy named Dean who just acquired possible the most beautifully-restored Bianchi road frame I have ever seen. It’s amazing what you can find with just a little perseverance and patience. Dean found this frame on Craigslist. He got it from a guy who repaints and restores frames and was offering the frame for an almost-unheard-of price. “So what?” you say. Big deal, it’s just another celeste blue frame with a Bianchi sticker on it. If any of you out there are saying that silently to yourselves, well, reevaluate your priorities. Either that, or just open your mind a little bit. In case you forgot, it’s that squishy thing behind your eye holes and above your neck.
Listen.
Quality steel is hard to come by these days. Sure, you can get a bitchin’ steel frameset from Surly and ride around screaming “Surly double-butted 4130 ChroMo – NATCH!” until your vocal cords resemble loose guitar strings. Maybe a few people will listen to you. Nothing against Surly, I love those bikes. I have two of them. But when your rolling on Italian steel (coincidentally, my old nickname from high school…better not to ask), you can just scream “Andiamo!” and have something worth talking about in a conversation. This bike comes from the same legendary line that produced the Paris-Roubaix-winning bike for Fausto Coppi in 1950. They are the oldest bicycle company in the world producing 45,000 frames a year by 1900. That’s the turn of the last century…Let that marinate in your brain case next time you are riding dirty on your Taiwanese whip. Dean plans to throw an internally-geared drivetrain on this bad boy and ride the F out of it. We’re going to keep tabs on Dean and his bike as the project progresses. So don’t touch that dial. Hey, check some more images of his frame below!
– Italian Steel
vintage steel is awesome bianchi has probably one of the most recognisable colors our there too, pretty sweet build
that’s the beautiful thing about steel. It can easily outlast you.
It can be restored, renovated, upgraded with new brazeons or mounts.
It’s nearly too good to be true.