So about 6 months ago, maybe longer, I got an email from a good friend of mine who came across an advertisement on the Adelaide Cyclists forum that he thought would interest me. Over the past 2 years I have made a hobby out of converting tired old bikes into newly refurbished Fixies. I’ve done about 6 or 7 fixie conversions of old Malvern Stars, Repco Racers and a Ricardo. The advertisement he sent me was a bloke GIVING AWAY an old Ricardo race bike, my friend thought it would be a good one for me to convert to a fixie. I thought the same thing when I first read it and arranged to pick it up form him. Then I saw it…. This bike was an absolute beauty. She looked as though she had only been ridden a handful of times in her time then left to sit in someone’s garage for the last 2 decades (the tyres even held pressure). I knew straight away that this bike deserved more than the same old fixie “upgrade” that I was used to. This old girl needed to be brought back to life as a real racing bike.
And so my journey began. I took about 6 months to research, collect parts and decide on the best way to go about a full restoration.
One of the things I absolutely loved about the bike was that beautiful Spearmint green pearl colour that coated her frame. I knew that when I had the frame powder-coated I would have to keep it Green, unfortunately I could not get anything as light as the original but I am happy with the peppermint green I went for.
The original running gear on her was Suntour however most of it was rusted in place or completely worn out. luckily I managed to collect New or reconditioned parts from the era (late 70’s/Early 80’s) including some BRAND NEW IN BOX Shimano Dura-Ace EX downtube shifters, a BRAND NEW IN BOX Shimano Dura-Ace EX front Derailleur, a Reconditioned Shimano Dura-Ace EX rear derailleur and a reconditioned set of Shimano Dura-Ace EX Brakes. I figured these would have been top of the line at the time this bike was built.
Fortunately the wheels and tyres were in really good condition. All I did was dismantle the wheels, polish the hubs and rims and replace the spokes with new ones. I also replaced the rusted out wheel skewers with some great Anodised Green skewers to match the frame colour (while this is not original I think it had to have some sort of modern bling to it).
I kept the original bottom bracket and axle as they were in perfect condition, I just cleaned and re-greased it all. The original Cranks were pretty good besides some dirt. I took them apart and polished them up to re-use.
The Headstem and handlebars were in amazing condition and all I did was polish them up to be re-used. The headset was rusted so I replaced it with a Chrome one to match the headstem. The original brake levers were in terrific condition however the hoods had perished. I toyed with the idea of re-using them but instead I went for a set of Aero levers to tidy up the cabling.
To finish off the job I added some white bar tape, white cabling, some whitewall tyres and a new white saddle. I even had the decals re-created to make sure everybody knows that this bike is an original Ricardo. I even had the “Made in Australia” sticker reproduced with the original Ricardo Factory address on it.
It actually turns out that my Father-in-law (Who originally got me into cycling) used to work at the Ricardo Factory here in Adelaide. He was working at the Malvern Star factory for a couple of years then briefly moved over to Ricardo on Pirie Street before getting married. He came with me to pick up this bike originally and he knew when he first saw it that she was a beauty. I have since purchased another Ricardo bike (a Ricardo Medallion) which I am going to restore as a gift to him. I will keep that one posted on here also.
Photo’s of the nearly complete project can be found at
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... fa4d717c64
I will add Before shots and final assembled shots when I get around to it.
Let me know what you think!