We have built a few bikes for Jon now and over the years it feels like we have grown to understand what we each enjoy about the sport. So it was with a certain twinkle in his eye that Jon pronounced a few months back that...
"Ive got a little project for you, if you're up for it!"
Jon disappeared into a side room for a few moments and returned with a small bubble wrap mountain. As the layers of protective coverings were peeled back I slowly began to understand what lay beneath.
In the years that I was first falling in love with the sport; the late 80's and early 90's; there was one team that I always looked forward to seeing when we tuned into the racing on Channel 4. Mapei were the SKY of the day, just with more flair. Their business of selling plastic particles might not be too glamorous but the team kit design more than made up for it. Combine that with the groundbreaking Colnago C40 frames and these team bikes were the thing of dreams. Where most kids at my school had posters up of Lambo's under lightening or Tiffany, I had pictures of Andrea Tafi and Johan Museeuw on my wall.
Having the opportunity to build up one of these bikes in as original a spec as possible has been a genuine delight. Its taken a lot of scouring eBay on Jons part, who has mined Eastern Europes rich seam of NOS bike parts. The back and forth over emails we have had, over the correctness of year of each component would have been comical to outsiders I'm sure, but to us was all part of the experience of creating this icon of cycling technology.
So let us know what you think of the finished results. Leave any comments or questions below and Ill endeavour to answer them for you.
I wonder what will be next...