This very special Tipo Roma came to me a number of years back and the post “on arrival” can be found here. Without digressing too much, this is the same Tipo Roma in its original condition, but not “the bike” that Gino Bartali rode to with the 1946 Giro d’Italia. And over the years I have not come across many others that are still in existence. I believe Gino’s bike is in a museum in Italy.

A very gentle restoration was always in the cards for this bike, however much of my procrastination was what to do about the wheels as they really needed to be rebuilt. I eventually decided to take them apart and what a massive labour of love that turned out to be. Besides being nearly 80 years old, there was so much old, rock hard tire glue on the rims you could barely see the spoke holes.

After countless hours with a wire brush on the dremel and some nasty solvent, they started to come around. In my effort to keep everything as correct as possible, I also moved on to refurb the spoke nipples and get the old glue out of the threads so they could be used again. Keeping in mind that I needed all 72 of the spoke nipples to put the wheels back together.

The final hurdle was replacing the original “Raggi Stella” butted spokes at the same 306|307mm length. Eventually enough of them turned up on eBay and I was good to go. The balance of the work was put into the hands of the wheel builder at La Bicicletta, and they did a beautiful job with only a very light flat spot on the rear rim after all these years.

The rest of the restoration was taking everything apart down to the bare frame and cleaning, greasing and resetting all of the bearings — hubs, bottom bracket, headset and pedals. The frame received a good cleaning with mild soap and lots of ‘elbow grease’ followed by a couple of coats of a good, non-abrasive carnuba auto wax.

All that is new on the bike, with the exception of the NOS Stella spokes, are the tires, bar tape and toe clip straps as the existing brake cables and housing were good to go with a little cleanup and lubrication. The Universal brake levers and callipers were fully disassembled, the old dirt and grease removed but I wanted to leave the old patina as it was.

So without any further adieu, here is how this very special 1946 Tipo Roma turned out. Enjoy!

•  •  •