80's Vitus Plus Carbone
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby ldrcycles » Sun May 19, 2013 10:30 am
Sorry about the thread munga, cool bike and all but we're way off course now haha.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby bicyclepassion » Tue May 21, 2013 8:40 am
Warren
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby Velo13 » Wed May 22, 2013 8:22 am
Whilst there is a lot of satisfaction out of building a full or complete resto, with a complete group; back in the day most riders rarely had one. Like yourself, I swapped out parts all the time, as new "technology" came on sale, or a lighter part was found.
I recently "gave up" on putting a full SR bike together (to ride L'Eroica), mainly because I could do the the money, but also due to the high cost of getting pieces in good condition. As a result, I plan to put together a "bitza" that I am sure I will enjoy just as much. It will be light, >25 years old, but it will have modern hoops.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby munga » Wed May 22, 2013 7:07 pm
unlikely.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby munga » Wed May 22, 2013 7:09 pm
st and dt came away from bb, then tt came away from st lug.
no broken bones, although i seemed to have lost some of my sense of humour.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby dayne » Wed May 22, 2013 7:14 pm
The thing is your in one piece,
Can you get some of the glue from Adrian for it.
It's a shame it was looking good.
At least you still have a bloody nice groupset,
The maiden voyage of my Tommasini saw me have a major clip stack at my first stop.
The four cars at the intersection thought it funny but at the time I didn't now I look back it was pretty funny.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby ldrcycles » Wed May 22, 2013 7:24 pm
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby sled » Wed May 22, 2013 7:29 pm
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby munga » Wed May 22, 2013 7:50 pm
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby QuangVuong » Wed May 22, 2013 9:00 pm
At least you're right. And now I'm slightly worried about mine.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby singlespeedscott » Wed May 22, 2013 9:02 pm
Definitely would of loved to of seen it. The finished project and the failing frame in action.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby singlespeedscott » Wed May 22, 2013 9:04 pm
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby munga » Wed May 22, 2013 9:06 pm
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby munga » Wed May 22, 2013 9:22 pm
i'd say age. there doesn't appear to be any modifications to the lugs or the tubes.singlespeedscott wrote:Was the failure just from age or some repair done in the past that you were unaware of?
i was gonna say something relating to quangs restoration methods, but that'd just be mean.
quang i don't think you have anything to worry about, but make sure you put a lot of weight on those pedals before you leave the house. i got about 400m from home and was rolling through a roundabout at the top of my street. i live on a steepish kind of hill, and in hindsight, i'm surprised i got up the street.
ended up highsiding into the local residents' fence and looked around to see who/what had hit me. no cars for as far as i could see. spooky. i honestly thought someone had thrown a basketball or something at my bike. that's what it felt like. what it looked like was something else.
bike was held together by the cables. good old campy cables are definitely pre-stretched now.
rear seat stays got bent up a bit and the bb has a couple of slight marks.
ergo shifter copped a bit of rash and i'll have to check out the crank, but i think my left leg took most of the load.
luckiest stack ever.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby dayne » Thu May 23, 2013 6:41 am
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby find_bruce » Thu May 23, 2013 7:53 am
It is generally not recommended to store Mungas, they don't keep well & you can't show off your collection in public anyway. Much better to stick to bicyclesdayne wrote:So it was probably a little early to be storing Munga up and salt in the wounds have led to him needing a snickers,sorry Munga
Good of you to man up & apologise though
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby munga » Thu May 23, 2013 8:05 am
you hear "ahaha, you shoulda bought blah-blah's frame" a half a dozen times and it gets kinda hmm...
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby bicyclepassion » Thu May 23, 2013 12:30 pm
Some came apart when they were virtually new. The importer at the time lost money on them due to this.
They look great on the wall as a display bike, great conversation piece.
I dont know what their design life was, but I dont think it was anything like 30 years.
Labour the point: They look great on the wall as a display bike.
Same goes for old ALAN frames. Ride them on your own, dont ride them in a group and put other people at risk.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby DavidI » Thu May 23, 2013 2:19 pm
I can vouch for this - a club mate of mine back in the late '80s/eary 90's had his fail twice within 6 months (first failure was repaired by the importer with the correct adhesive), and he was a <60kg junior; his father's Vitus also failed shortly after. Both frames were under 2 years old at the time.bicyclepassion wrote:.......Some came apart when they were virtually new....
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby LG » Thu May 23, 2013 10:18 pm
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby munga » Thu May 23, 2013 10:32 pm
admittedly, there are probably more failures than with traditional lugged steel frames, but hey, we're talking about epoxy bonded tubes. it happens on yachts, airplanes, and bicycles.
you takes your chances.
personally, it hasn't put me off the concept. if the vitus is deemed repairable, i'll get it repaired. epoxy bonding technology has moved on a bit in 30 years.
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Re: 80's Vitus Plus Carbone
Postby bicyclepassion » Fri May 24, 2013 9:34 am
I think a bottom bracket falling out of frame when you are riding it is plenty enough warning to others not to ride these frames when they are old. They always look fine, but you cannot see the deterioration of the glue, and even if only a small percentage of them actually fail, say one in ten, that is way too many. Fork failure is the dangerous one. In my original post in April 2010 I said "you probably wont die" when when one of these fails. I'll update that now to, "but then again, maybe you will."munga wrote:for those playing at home. i broke my vitus on its maiden voyage.
st and dt came away from bb, then tt came away from st lug.
no broken bones, although i seemed to have lost some of my sense of humour.
In the 1970's and 80's, ALAN had a worse reputation for failure than Vitus.
Virtually the entire scratch bunch in Gippsland was on Vitus's in the 1980's for a couple of years. I turned up in about 1990, having been off the the bike for a couple of years, and one of the other riders (Australian Road Champion) said to me "I'm not happy riding with you if you are riding that thing". Everyone else had pensioned theirs off well and truly by then.
They were very light for the time, mine was just over 8kg with standard Suntour Superbe parts, no tricky bits, which is why we rode them. Plus the fact that they looked fantastic.
Sean Kelly rode these bikes through the 1980's. An Aussie bike mechanic asked him how the frames were standing up to the demands of the pro races, and Kelly replied, "pretty good, but I dont know really, they give me a new one every few weeks". (Or words to that effect)
I dont want to turn this into a Vitus or ALAN bashing thread, as I have a strong affection for both, and the latest products from both companies are no doubt fine, but we are talking about 25 to 30 year old epoxy here.
Warren
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