Repco Appreciation Society

[Rob74]

I find that seat tube centre to top is a far more useful measurement. Especially when dealing with the length of vintage seatposts.

Prefer C-C its better to be apples with apples.

You can have a 400 long seat post if you want one.

Rob

[singlespeedscott]

And you'll be riding the wrong size bike.

Older bikes, if you want them to be proportioned right, should be sized with a classic length post, usually a useful length of 14-15.5 cm. Not some mtb abortion.

[steeldoken]

I had this Repco Superlite a while back, not a tri-fluoro colour one, but still nice!

[jcmtan]

Restored this Eurosport Tri-A some time ago. Gave it a good clean, and upgraded all components. Judging by its serial number, the frame was manufactured by Kuwahara in 1989.

[munga]

nice one, jcmtan

[TopSide]

. . . . Judging by its serial number, the frame was manufactured by Kuwahara in 1989. . . .

If you don't mind, I am interested to know what the serial number is on the Eurosport Tri-A. You don't see many Kuwahara built frames from 1989 and later.

[schuberj]

Steeldoken, love that old Superlite. I have never seen one with that kind of badging on it and was actually wondering if it was one someone had made to look like a Superlite, but no, there it is in the '82 catalogue, the first of its kind

Jcmtan, great looking Eurosport. For TopSide's information the serial number on (one of) my frame(s) like this is K9K5185. At the time this was the last of the Kuwahara Repco models left and only came in the one colour and was around for two years ('89 and '90), which is why there seems to be so many more of them around than earlier models (because there are!). In theory there could be four times as many as all the earlier models had at least 2 colour choices. I was interested that the catalogues list the fork as Tangaloy, however both of mine have Tange Cr-Mo stickers on the fork as well.

Rob74, I finally got around to measuring my '88 Eurosport too:
Top tube: 56cm c-c
Seat tube: 56cm c-c (What do you know, it is pretty much 22" square!)
Down tube: 62.7cm c-c (Not sure how accurate my centre is here, although the measurements in your link all seemed even harder to measure!)
Head tube: 14.3cm top to bottom
Chainstay: 40.8cm (This was to the centre of the wheel with the standard wheel spacer in place)
Seat stay: 53cm (As above)
Fork: 36.7cm (measured at head tube angle from the bottom of the headset to the centre of the wheel)

To get an idea of what the serial numbers were doing at this stage, this one is K8L5702 so it definitely looks like the 8 (and 9 above) is the year.

Hope this helps. I am kind of keen to measure the newer Eurosport now to see if they are the same.

[rangersac]

Picked up an Oly 12 frame a while back that I decided to bling up for the missus. Nothing special, but with it's lovely 'subtle' colour scheme the first image that came to mind when I saw the frame was this:



So I decided to try and keep a similar hollywood appearance for the rebuild. Here are a couple of crappy shed shots as I finished it off late last night.

[Rob74]

Gone swish then…its all about the colour scheme

Ultegra Brifters….bit of a change from the Light Action Down Tube Shifters,
Changed seat post
Fnt Chain Rings Don't look like 52 42 anymore & Largest on Rear cluster looks bigger than 28 so should be able to climb almost anything? Original Cranks were Sugino VP.
Original Brakes would have been single pivot DiaComp? Front has changed cannot quite make out if it is dual pivot, rear looks to be dualpivot. dual pivot is a nice upgrade to do,
Original rims were Wobler Gentleman with JoyTech Hubs 36, 36, with "Rustless Spokes" not even the Vertex came with Stainless Steel Spokes then….
Fancy Seat to replace the Viscount
Stem looks to have stampings and shape is not quite right? Nitto? so it has changed
Original Bars would have been stamped Champion and 420 wide, could be the angle but they look wider than that.
All new cables & outers should be <11.2kg dependent on the hubs, rims tyres & tubes
All up sweet.......Should Fess up now as a REPCO tragic & that I have both the Yellow&White + Pink&Purple from 87/88 as 25" frames


*********
schuberj - Thx for measurements.


Rob

[rangersac]

Guilty as charged your honour, pink and white for the win! I think if I'd restored it to the original spec the first thing the missus would've said to me is 'how the hell do I change gears' or something of the like! Also nice detective work on the parts. I was financially as well as practically fortunate with most of the running gear (brifters, ders, brakes), as they came off an Orbea Aqua that had been in a serious front end, which the Oly12 frame owner basically gave away to me to get it off his hands. Stem is a Nitto Dynamic left over from another project whilst the wheels are a set of Velocity's which I grabbed as I liked the white deep-V appearance. Bars are actually 42 wide, although they are Winpistas. Front chain rings 48-34, and cassette is an 11-30. A pragmatic choice as SWMBO is not the most enthusiastic hill climber

I'll get the scales out along with some nicer pics at some point.

[rohang]

Thanks for your pictures! I am looking at doing up an old superlite. I was wondering, what did you use to secure the cable when you changed from the down tube shifters to the leaver shifters? Can you buy something to screw into where the down tube shifters were? or did you make something?
Thanks! Rohan

[schuberj]

Thanks for your pictures! I am looking at doing up an old superlite. I was wondering, what did you use to secure the cable when you changed from the down tube shifters to the leaver shifters? Can you buy something to screw into where the down tube shifters were? or did you make something?
Thanks! Rohan

Shimano STI Downtube Cable Stop Adjusters, model CS50, around $15 (maybe a bit more locally).


There is also a model ST74 that has a lever instead of one of the barrels, around $30.

[koshari]

You can also get generic cable down tube stops on eBay for about 15 delivered. Similar setup with barrel adjusters only flat black.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/DownTube-Shi ... 33984fb7be" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[gazo]

Gone swish then…its all about the colour scheme.
Rob

Interesting! It really is a lovely colour scheme and does not HAVE to be a ladies bike (although that was my first thought too).



I rescued this baby from Hard Rubbish and have just about finished a mild restoration (I like to keep it simple: kill the rust, get it working & back on the road). So I think this ticks all the ORIGINAL boxes?





Shimano Light Action Down Tube Shifters
Original seat post
Original Sugino VP Cranks
Original DiaComp Brakes - what does single pivot v dual pivot imean?
Original rims were Wobler Gentleman with JoyTech Hubs - I swapped them onto an Apollo IV project but now thinking I will swap them back! Thanks for that!
Fancy Seat - original ruined, took this one off another old Repco.
Original Bars stamped Champion.

Also has what could be the original Zefal pump - sun-faded from a dark red to almost perfectly match the pink!



Rides like a dream.

So what age is it likely to be? 1987/88? Any way to be exact - I haven't seen a serial number.

[schuberj]

It is an '87 model which may have been built in '88, although I suspect most models were built in one year and just sold into the next.

[gazo]

Thanks schuberj.

[Rob74]

gazo » Tue Dec 02, 2014 5:00 pm
"what does single pivot v dual pivot mean?"
=>> Brake Types
Single Pivot less mechanical advantage = more effort for stopping power compared to dual pivot

"So what age is it likely to be? 1987/88?"
=>> its an 87/88….the 86/87 with similar colour scheme had the down tube shifters on top of the down tube.
88/89 were different colours

Rob

[schuberj]

Repco Vertex for sale on eBay, only $65 buy it now!

Made you look!

[munga]

those bloody mtb's "make me look" every time my ebay subscription email hits my inbox!
i do regret selling my set. one day a vicenza will be mine, perhaps..

[schuberj]

Yes, the same thing happens to me with that $200 Eurosport with the broken frame that gets relisted every week. Perhaps I have enough Eurosports anyway!

[schuberj]

Okay, after looking for some time I have finally purchased one of the older Nishiki Repcos. I was looking for something smaller than my other bikes that visitors could ride and although I probably paid to much, I think it was worth it to save another great bike spending the rest of its life as a fixie!




I mean, internal gear routing, how could you not put gears on her!

Unfortunately pretty much none of the original parts were on her and the paint and decals are probably not as good as I may have hoped (although pretty much knew). Had a full Dura Ace 7400 group lined up for her, which I thought might be at least close to the original look with some modern improvements like SLR and aero levers, but the lying ***hole on eBay told me he "forgot" he listed it, although it is now listed again (different user, some of the same pictures) for $200 more than what I "won" it at. eBay really is a joke.

Anyway, in the meantime I think I will source all the decals and get her painted up like new in her original livery, yellow headtube and all!

Interesting to note that it looks like the rear brake cable is in two parts (like some more modern bikes) with only the cable going through the frame rather than the more usual cable and outer going through (like my Olympic 16 did).

[yugyug]

Interesting to note that it looks like the rear brake cable is in two parts (like some more modern bikes) with only the cable going through the frame rather than the more usual cable and outer going through (like my Olympic 16 did).

I built up a NOS 80s frame that had the internal cabling like that - never seem it before - confused the hell out of me!

[schuberj]

I have been trying to come up with a better way to explain the various levels of Repcos to newbies without them having to go back through 100 pages of information. This is the best I have come up with so far.



I am happy for any input into this. I actually started with every (road) bike from every year but it ended up just being to complicated. In the end I dropped anything that was not Cr-Mo (yeah, I know that 531 isn't actually Cr-Mo ) and tried to simplify it by having the next model that approximately replaced the one before. Note that this almost always coincided with a drop in quality. I have also tried to colour code from information I could get from catalogues and the forum to show what type of frames these are:

Yellow = Australia
Green = Japan (Kawamura)
Orange = Taiwan (Giant)
Purple = Taiwan? (possibly not Giant, pretty much the time they started using buzz words rather than real specs). There is a possibility Superlites were non-Giant before this time too.
Red(ish) = China? Tig welded much heaver frames.

Note I did not have any information from '92 and '93.

And arguments start... now!

[munga]

nice work, mate.
by 1990 there wasn't much left to get interested in..

[schuberj]

Yes, you are definitely right there. Even the Vertex, although I have heard is supposed to be a good frame, was heavier than the 531 models. Makes you wonder what the point was.