Not quite classic Colnago Classic

Got some skinwall Veloflex Master 25s, took a pic because. WTF is with their tire labels though, this set has them on the non-drive side. Must have been after Friday lunch at the factory.
There’s some rad pink to fluro yellow delta carbons coming in the mail which will ‘tie the room together’ nicely. Great bike, better every time I ride it.

looking good Floody!

Pretty pretty good.

classy as, nice one

As said earlier it gets better every pic. Loving that straight fork. Loving the whole thing really.

On slicks with no (or very little) tread like these it doesn’t really matter how the tire is oriented with regards to rotation, because the tread patterns are so small that they serve no purpose (see what sheldon says). So you can probably have the label on the drive side without worrying too much.

Yeah I know the file tread is non-directional but it has a direction printed on the label…to me it seems less weird to run them on the drive side than run them with the arrow pointing the wrong way.

I once got a set of Record 20s which had one on each side. Again I’m thinking Friday arvo job.

Needs a better looking cage. I’m thinking maybe king cage powdercoated pearl white.

I’ve had them with logos on DS, but my last few sets have had them on the NDS.

One on each side would kill me.

So yeah, all good things come to an end. Somewhat predictably in hindsight, the downtube cracked almost all the way around starting from the lower bidon cage mount as I stomped up a hill last week. I am quite certain it was the fitting of the oversize (M5) rivnut, and consequent stress from inside the downtube, which caused it to let go. That, or the paint fade haha.

Bad Times by floody31

So; that’s a bit disappointing really.
Not sure how to proceed. I like this frame a lot, it just works for me, feels very natural. It would be overcapitalising to repair, but then again, what price on a bike that works for you, really? It’d probably lose the chrome headtube lug finish but I think a downtube replacement with a bit of paint matching would be pretty straightforward.

In the meantime I’m going to try and either get my old Specialized m2 back or buy a beater frame of some sort and slap on the group off this. Kind of keen on a 1" headtube Cannondale.

That’s very sad. You seem to like it so I’d investigate the repair. Not sure who in Tas is doing repairs but I had Geoff Duke here in Melbourne replace the chainstays in a Moser and the repair itself was very reasonably priced. Stripping the chrome and the polishing and re-chroming added a bit but there’s not a lot of chrome on your Colnago to polish and re-plate. Or you could just strip the chrome and paint the HT lugs.

It was really disappointing, especially because a small repair would have prevented the big repair! But that’s the risk with used stuff I guess.
I will get the DT replaced at some stage and as you suggest, most likely just try and touch the repair in to the undamaged parts and paint the headtube all red.

In the meantime I bought a NOS '93 Rossin Performance (Lotus-Festina) frameset and swapped everything over, and I like it too!