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My experience with a fellow hubber deserves to be highlighted given the amount of stories of rogue traders and scammers recently. A guy posted some pictures and requested a valuation of his Colnago C40 recently. There were some responses and I sent him a DM wherein I told him what I thought the bike was worth and offered him a bit less but a fair deal which he accepted. Over the last year I have sold off my bikes, shrunk my bike room and the last one to go of the vintage bikes was my C40 - I regretted that decision so when this one popped up I grabbed it despite not really riding on the road apart from the 2 pre CTCT rides and then the actual lap around the peninsula. Anyway this hubber went out of his way to pack up the bike despite no rush. I probably unwisely paid by EFT. Said hubber let me know I could collect and I sent The Courier Guy to collect and deliver to my LBS. Having started a new business I'm keeping things lean and didn't want the bike delivered home. I can't be directing the family to be financially responsible and then be buying vintage bikes now can I ? I'm working away during the week and my LBS called to say the bike was spectacular but the 9 speed Campy groupset wasn't working properly. I was a bit miffed because I thought I'd bought ten speed and a working bike. I do know that it was on a wall and too big for the seller so I sent him a whatsapp politely expressing my dismay. What has followed during the week is a reminder to us all that there are good people out there who place reputation and doing the right thing above money. In fact @Barry was insanely generous in his offer to ensure my new bike was what I wanted. I say insane because when I realised what kind of guy I was dealing with I said don't worry we'll hunt the parts and sort it out no rush. Nope Barry wanted things right and as we couldn't find a record 10 groupset instantly he went and bought and packed up a gorgeous complete bike with the Campy record I wanted. Bike is being collected and I'll end up with 2 bikes and Barry has lost money on this deal so far. I'm obviously not going to keep the other bike and will swap the parts, get the new one perfect, sell it and get Barry as much back as I can. But @Barry you are a gentleman and have incredible ethics. You are slightly mad as this was beyond what needed to be done but much appreciated. I will post pics of the bike/bikes when done

I have posted a review on my first gravel Colnago on the forum a few years back but the bike was a Cyclocross frame designed with only thing in mind: getting Sven Nuys around world cup courses as quickly [and uncomfortably] as possible. The frame broke and the friendly people at Santam provided me with the option of an upgrade. As luck would have it, Campagnolo launched their Hydraulic groupsets at the same time - providing me with the opportunity to fix the other major gripe i had with the old bike: ornamental brakes. Before i bore you with details i think its important to give credit where it is due: i imported my first Colnago from abroad and this one was bought from the local distributor [Alpine Sports]. The price was comparable to the imported one and the service is out of this world. Mark Nel delivered the frame to my work and when i developed a problem with it, he gave me a selection of his own bikes to ride while the problem was sorted out. It would be silly to use anybody else imho. Frame:Colnago prestige monocoque carbon.Internal cable routing enabled a crucial improvement over the old bike: i can run a full length cable housing from shifter to derailleur which solved the problem of dust/mud affecting my shifting. frame designed to take UCI legal 33mm tires but i can safely run a 40mm front and 38mm at the back [provided wheels are stiff].sloping frame enabled long 27mm seatpost which has HUGE flex so comfort is vastly improved over old bike.Groupsetminimal thinking went into this: Campagnolo has two levels of hydraulic disc brakes and i went for carbon...because it is so pretty.Stages crank arm power meter gearing is an issue: go as light as you can for off road climbing. 50/34 crank and 11-29 cassette but with my medium cage derailleur i can also put on 11-32 if i need to Wheels: you are a bit limited with Campag cassettes and disc brakes at this stage but i intend abusing the wheels a bit and up to now the Zonda set i have has been very impressive: not the lightest but serviceable hubs, super stiff and has taken some very rough terrain in their stride.Tires: after trying quite a few i have settled on Schwalbe G-one for now. Not the most durable but very good in all other respects.PS- gravels bikes are not better than a hard-tail 29er on bad surfaces. in my opinion it is the versatility as a road bike that I need. So with road wheels it becomes a proper road bike:

Hi, I have a 54cm Colnago C40 Art Decor with a Campagnolo groupset. (similar to the attached image). I am considering selling as I feel it is time for something a little more contemporary. Don't get me wrong - it's a fantastic bike. Just time to move on... If I Google the approximate value, I see people have listed theirs from between R8,000 and up to R32,000! That is a massive difference. So my fellow BikeHubers - could those more clued-up than me possibly provide some insight here? I'm a newb so any guidance would be appreciated. Ta,

Hi all, so after being a "Look" guy for a while, the time has come to try something new. I have narrowed my options down to the Bianchi XR4 and the Colnago Concept. This is such a difficult decision for obvious reasons so was hoping to get some unbiased opinions to help with the decision.

I am so excited about my new road bike that I cannot keep it to myself- I think this is the future of road bikes [certainly for training] in SA. I have been racing road bikes since 1984 and stopped racing competitively in 2005 [family responsibilities]. I however continued to commute to work [on my old Colnago C40] and more recently started mountain biking. My MTB is now such a competent off-road bike [1x11; carbon full sus 29er, etc.] that it has become a very incompetent bike on the road – I still commute. so when looking for a replacement for my old Colnago [still perfect, but you know sometimes you itch]. My list of frustrations/requirements were the following: I ride it on the road but there are certain sections I have to ride that is downright suicidal with traffic and if I could safely skip these by riding off-road, it would make my commute much safer. Furthermore, you are bound to hit potholes etc when riding in the dark and wheels that does not disintegrate when you do so would be a plus.The gearing had to allow road and some limited off road riding [with the 1x11 MTB gearing, you are always out of gears on the road] If you ride off-road, the tyres MUST be tubeless [very hard to find for road bikes], otherwise you’d end up fixing punctures the whole time I do train with my roadie friends on occasion [and may even do some road races ] and therefore a hard tail MTB with narrow tyres will probably not be the answer. The reality is that on a good surface, road bikes are vastly more efficient My Colnago can take 25mm tyres but no wider and the same goes for most road bikes- wider tyres on my road bike is therefore not an option Disc brakes are the future [i think] but finding disc brakes for a tubeless road wheel is almost not possible I got incredible mileage out of my Campagnolo components over the years [20 000km out of my last cassette!] and am fed up with the poor durability of MTB parts. When I bought the Colnago from Willie Engelbrecht in 2004, he told me that eventually, everybody who can, will end up on a Colnago. Now I have to admit, this bike has made me a bit of a snob but settling for some mass produced bike would be like swapping my Lamborghini for a very fast new BMW….just not the same [i wanted a power meter on the bike that did not cost a forture] The only solution to all these questions was therefore a Colnago Prestige cyclocross bike with Campag components. Other specifics I considered include: Compact crankset [50/34T] with 11-29 cassette. shifting is super smooth and i can get up the gravel hills near my house Wheels: very difficult one. i could have gone for a standard 29er wheelset [they are 28" and therefore 700c] but was not sure i would be able to run the higher pressures required for the road. Reality is that i end up riding tyres at 40psi only. In the end i opted for Stan's Grail X rims and rear hub is Powetap [cheapest powermeter i could find]. setting these rims up tubeless was super easy- even with non tubeless tyres. i have the option of buying a spare set of proper road racing wheels in future [should be almost 1kg lighter] Tyres: work in progress as i have still not got ideal set-up [Vittoria CX 31mm]. i will swap these for wider ones. UCI rules limit racing wider than 33mm so not many manufacturers make 35-40mm tyres which i think will be better Disc brakes: currently my only option for Campag was to have cabled calipers and although its better than rim brakes in the wet, i suspect i will upgrade these in 2 years or so when hydrolic ones become availablethe handling of the bike has astounded me. It's not a MTB but i can ride single track and reasonable surfaces and the narrow tyres grips loose surfaces better than i could ever imagined. have only been out on the MTB once since i got this bike a month ago