Ottid's Rossin

There's nothing wrong on taking something good from the past and making it better by adding something new. It's been a mantra we preached here at Pancalen Cycles, and the latest fruit of said concept is this Rossin road bike, owned by Raditya "Ottid" Wisnuwardhana.

Mario Rossin served his apprenticeship under Ernest Colnago back in the days when Ernesto actually performed much of the labor himself.  It was during this era when his work with the likes of Merckx that Colnago shot to the pinnacle of fame and success. Rossin's big chance came in 1974 when, with the backing of some wealthy industrialists, he opened his own frame works just 2 miles across town from Ernesto.  In the following years, Rossin continued to refine and improve his designs and workmanship to the present point of meticulous quality.

Obtained from Italy through some fierce online bidding, there were no clue on when this 51cm frame was made. We can only assume that it was made somewhere in the early '80s, judging from the brake cable routing. It features some of Rossin's distinctive details such as pantographed faux-unicrown fork and many Rossin castings, especially on the seatstay cap. Rossin frames usually features some of the loudest paint job, although it is not very clearly seen here.

We've encountered so many satisfying result from combining the best character of steel frames with modern components, and this build is no different. Adorned with carbon fiber parts, SRAM's excellent Force group takes the nostalgic ride feel to a whole new level. Combined with Mavic Cosmic Elite aluminium wheels, the whole bike weighs 9,2 kilograms with Campagnolo pedals installed.

Take a look at the bottom bracket shell and you'll notice something odd: it looks like the crankset is spinning on a Shimano 105 bottom bracket. As any classic Italian frames, the Rossin is using Italian thread bottom bracket shell (36 x 24tpi). Instead of sourcing SRAM bottom bracket from overseas (which will take some time), we decided to use Shimano outboard bearing bottom bracket assembly that was much easier to find in Jakarta. Ignoring the "Do Not Disassemble" label, we dismantle their stock bearings and replaced them with Enduro CrMo Steel bearings that fits to SRAM's 26mm bottom bracket spindle diameter. The concoction works just fine.