The bike in question is a 1988 Concorde, used by the legendary PDM team. The bike was purchased from The Bicycle Entrepreneur bike store in Perth, Western Australia. I was told by the owner/manager Dennis he had relationship with the team and that is how he acquired the bike. Based on some on the detail on the bike, such as the number holder and the specific engraving on the bike, I am inclined to believe this.
I spent a few years racing the bike before becoming one of the fastest bike couriers in Perth. In hindsight, this wasn’t the best use for the bike and it ended up having a pretty hard life. Then came a young family and other commitments and the bike slowly fell into disrepair.
Fast forward to 2008, I made my first efforts to restore the bike but because of the neglect, I quickly ran into problems the stem and forks where so badly corroded they could not be separated by any of the local bike mechanics.
So for the next 10 years the bike sat in pieces waiting for some love and attention. Finally in 2022, I decided it was either time to fix it or forget it. It was quite by chance I approached a company called Carbon Steed to have the frame re-chromed and repainted. What follows are the photos of the restoration process to the final product.
These images show how bad the damage was to the forks and the stem. Stem could only be removed using acid. The last image shows just what an amazing job the people at Carbon Steed did of remaking the stem. The “Concorde” engraving on the stem made it a pretty unique part of the bike, so I was pretty happy they could save it.
Next came the stripping of the frame. At this point it didn’t feel like there was much left of the original bike.
There was quite a wait while the frame was sent off to be de-chromed and re-chromed. While this was happening, I kept busy cleaning and repairing other parts of the bike. I’ll also say when searching for New Old Stock (NOS) Ebay is your friend, another handy site I found was Steel Vintage. I was lucky enough to find the decal set needed on Ebay, this was an exact match, including the Columbus SLX tubing stickers.
Next there was the cleaning of the wheels and cleaning off of 30 year old tubular glue from the rims. As it turns out, it comes off quite easily with the aid of a heat gun.
Other parts replaced included the brake hoods, cables, brake pads, tubular tyres, and bar tape.
The raw frame after being re-chromed. The plain chrome frame still looked pretty awesome
Next step, the painting and details. The team at Carbon Steed did an absolutely stunning job, in every detail. A small variation from the original, the stem is now the same gun metal grey as the frame, but not bad addition. The other point to note is how they perfectly matched the original paint colours,
And so on to the build phase……
The biggest issue was finding the tools required to such an old bike, such as the headset press and the socket for the bottom bracket. In the end it was easier to have the local bike store install the headset.
And finally the finished product, mostly….The saddle could do with replacing but I’m still looking for a suitable replacement.
