A while back, the good lads at Cicli Boom wanted to build a vintage wheelset for their latest project, and they managed to obtain a set of new-old-stock Dura Ace hubs from the one and only Speedbicycles.
Speedbicycles Gmbh (Ltd liab. Co) (SARL) is a company established in 2003, specializing in purchasing, selling, repairing, restoring, and providing advices on vintage lightweight bicycles. It all begun when Stefan Schaefter, the owner, started collecting and restoring vintage bicycles in early 1980s. Over the years this collection specialized into lightweight bicycles and got selected and refined.
His passion on vintage bicycles is easily reflected elsewhere. Opening the package directly sent from Switzerland is a wonderful experience in itself.
It's not the first time that Cicli Boom scored parts from Speedbicycles. Prior to this, they managed to get an almost complete set of Shimano Ultegra 6400 gruppo, minus hubs, cassette, and chain. Although it's a secondhand gruppo, it's in a very decent condition. It is the target of Speedbicycles keeping the bikes as authentic as possible. For to preserve the flair of the bikes repainting, rechroming, etc. is avoided wherever applicable.
Okay, back to the package. After tearing the wrappings apart in excitement, this is what we have inside the box.
A business card, of course. Classy indeed.
And trading cards! Just like baseball cards, but bicycle themed. And it's Coppi! FAUSTO COPPI! One of our cycling hero!
We search all over to find out about these cards, but found nothing. We guessed it was one of those collectible cards made by Campagnolo for their distributors, back in the days. At the back of the cards, a brief history about the featured racer was written in French and Italy, depending on the location of the distributor.
Oh, yeah. Of course. The hubs.
It's in a perfect condition. You can even smell the scent of Stefan's storage, close your eyes and imagine that you're there, among with stacks of boxes full of new-old-stock and used bike parts. Really. It came with the instruction manual sheet, even the warning label on the quick-release skewer is still intact.
The rear hub is an early 8-speed Hyperglide model with 32 drillings. It was made in April 1993, as the production code suggests. You can see the outer threads to make it compatible with the older Uniglide cassette. It's compatible with any 8- or 9- or even 10-speed cassette, as long as the smallest cog on the cluster is 12T. A smaller 11T cog will require a more modern Hyperglide-C freehub body. You might want to read more about this, here.
The front hub is also sports 32 hole drillings and the production marking told us that it was made in July 1992.
These hubs will be laced to a pair of low flange hubs and will be rolling under another collaboration project between us and Cicli Boom. Other than the 6400 gruppo we said earlier, for all we can say now that it's a British with some Italian parts. Check out the build, soon!
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