Bought this bike about ten years ago for a few dollars at a garage-sale and mostly just used it in the winter in the basement on a mag-trainer stand. Over this summer though I have been tweaking it for speed. It was a good candidate for this because it has a very light Columbus tube frame and sporty geometry, at least it was sporty in 1985 when it was manufactured, and it is much lighter and sporty than my other two road bikes.
What got me serious was thinking about having a bike with longer cranks to try, since I am a taller than average rider. I had access to a set of 180mm cranks which I used in racing back in the 1990s so I swapped them onto the bike and was amazed when I easily went about one mph faster around a favorite route than I did on my usual road-bike fitted with 170mm cranks. Now I have adjusted the seating position much more to my liking and added a set of Time-brand clipless pedals I have had laying around since the 1990s which I am hoping will unleash even more power and speed.
I don't think there is much more I can do to this bike, but at some point I would like to find bars that are a few inches narrower, and I do have an old Zuess aluminum rear freewheel that feels a pound lighter than the solid-steel Sachs unit on it now which I may try at some point. In the 90s I used to ride and race a Motobecane this size with these cranks and pedals on it and was able to do some time-trials in the 22-23mph range. I know I am slower now, but it will be interesting to see what I can do with a similar setup now. I will try it out on one of the old TT courses later this week and see how fast it will go. [ATTACH type="full"]5452[/ATTACH]
