Vicini Pista Testa Piatta restored by me

Presenting my freshly restored late 70's-early 80's Vicini Pista.

The frame was bought on E-bay with deteriorating paintjob (it was of red color). Upon unboxing I realized the frame was damaged in unspecified by seller crash event. The rear triangle was bent leftwards, so I had to restore the alignment by hand without a jig using a specialized hook I borrowed from my fellow bike mechanic. I wasn't really in the mood returning the frame back to seller as it is quite difficult to find a decent track frame that large for reasonable money. Whole this final build including work and materials costs around 1000€ give or take.

Decals were made to order in Ukraine. The paint is also of Ukrainian origin – 2 layers of ridiculously large grain siver metallic flake (the grain was so large that it wouldn't pass the filter while sprayed at the pressure of four atmospheres), 5 layers of green candy, 2 layers of finishing clear coat. It took 5 attempts and 3 different specialists to paint the frame to the condition you see on these photos. The paintjob I was satisfied with was performed by a local motorcycle aerographist specializing on custom helmet paintjobs. He's done a tremendous job of preserving the relief of those lugs as well as the pantography.

The wheels are mirror polished Nisi Sludi 390 rims laced to gunmetal grey anodized Polso high flange hubs using double butted Sapim spokes — done by me. The tires are Panaracer Agilest 25 mm. Given the tight clearance, I didn't dare using 28 mm width, but as it turned out, on these rims these particular tires measure dead-on 23 mm, so a little bit on the conservative side.

The saddle is classic San Marco Concor Supercorsa I bought new 10 years ago. I did re-upholstering myself as the saddle was of white color splattered with stains no cleaning compound would buff out no matter what I tried. I said "screw it" and ordered a bunch of black synthetic leather — much more practical and simple to live with.

On the transmission side there is 53/17T chainring/cog combo and 0.5 kg heavyweight half-link chain. At first I rode with normal narrow/wide chain, but on that transmission the rear hub position is either too far into dropouts or too close to the rear end.

Before starting the restoration process, I rode the bike for whole season "as is" to get the taste if I would like the ride quality and handling. The bike rides beautifully even on rough tarmac. Very smooth and stable, despite its aggressive sprinter geometry. This is in part thanks to short fork rake of just 29 mm, resulting in rather long and stable 60 mm trail figure. I like that.

All in all, enjoy these pics. As I did enjoy working on this bike. It's my 3rd bike restoration and the best one so far.