Hump Bike June 8, 2011

Today's Humpbike is Minty Vinty or, perhaps, more appropriately "Celeste Vintage" (pronounced vin-tah-jay), score from a recent gear swap at the Wild Rose. It was well loved and lightly ridden.  Trying to find the value of this gem, I came to realize that the Celeste color is a significant premium over identical bikes in other colors; like Oury grips, there is a cult.

It's a 1988 Bianchi Supperleggera, 44cm equipped with Campy, Modolo, Gipiemme, and Ambrosio.  The Superleggera (Superlight) frames were made mostly from Columbus SL tubing, especially the smaller frames.  This beaut has a manked generic Cloumbus sticker on the seattube and a world champion 1987-1988 sticker on the downtube.

Not too often you see one of these, triple, look closely you can still see machine tool marks on the chainrings.

The whole drivetrain is spectacular with early Campy index shifting that works great, a mid-cage der., and a Sachs (France) freewheel.

Gipiemme hubs, a Campy knockoff not unlike Zeus.  Solid stuff made out of cold forged aluminum, though a bit more angular in aesthetic. Here's the Gipiemme headset.

Gipiemme, Italy's other high-end component maker made BMX parts for awhile, too, distributed out of Chicago. Now they mostly make high-end road wheels.

An old racer told me that "Modolo" was code in the peloton for "my brakes have failed I need someone with Modolos!"  Again, precision Italian cold forging.  And look at these pads!

Modolo made stems and bars, too. They still do.