this project started when i saw a proline frame set on Aus ebay. that's pretty rare. after asking appropriate questions of the seller i decided to BIN. a week later the frame set turns up and to say it was good condition was waaay over stating it's actual condition. once again 2 people's differing thouhgts on good and very average weren't the same. the plan changed as the chrome was shot and the fork steer tube needed a lot of attention due to damage to the threads. a quick email to Robert in Brissy to see if he could do anything with it proved once again he's the man.
here's a pic of the frame set when i recieved it.
and the damage to the steer tube which wasn't disclosed to me before the deal
Robert repaired the fork and smoothed out the frame and the metallic red was discussed. it turned out to be very similar to the 1980 colour but with slightly more fleck in it. to see this in sunlight is quite stunning.
the correct 3 colour stickers for 1981/82 prolines proved very difficult and expensive to find. how ever persitence paid off and i aquired some genuine 1981 frame stickers and a very good quality repo set from a fella in the US. i wasn't about to put these babies on anything so i had a sticker maker measure and copy them, doing a few more sets than i needed to share with others and to eventually help get my costs back.
at first i was going to de-anno a set of box Ukai's but a NOS pair of weinmann rims appeared on ebay and nobody bid on them so i thought why not. hub selection was easy. Suntour were a major partner to redline BITD so a nice set of sealed bearing ones were bought from vertego in the UK, along with the chainwheel, sugino spider and freewheel. postage is always a killer but..........
next was the 401's scourced from ebay in the US which turned out quite nice after a bit of autosol and repo stickers. the suntour pedals are quite simply the best quality pedals i have used. the brute stem i had from another project that i had sold. it was originally red but had faded very badly to the point where i dropped it in caustic then done a rough polishing job with my bench polisher.
the genuine pad set was bought over about a year in individual pieces..don't ask how much LOL the original plan was to put grab-on 2 grips on but the set i have are a bit dry now and i could only get one sleeve over the inner, so i bit my lip and went for the lousy AME's that we can get every day. the bars are genuine stamped redline proline
i decided to go a different route than the normal DC 1000/900 for brakes and put in a long arm centrepull Diacompe. these were found searching a road race bike store on ebay. this created a small problem of needing a bracket for the centre pull but this was soon found once again on ebay but in Australia along with the DC 1 1/4" dia cable clamps for the large top tube that redlines have. stopping power is tenfold better than the sidepulls
i'm sure you fellas have all seen this bike but i am so proud of how this one turned out i thought i'd throw it up here to show what can be done, especially after it being quite a dog when i first bought it.
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