Benotto 3000 restauration project

Some history on Benotto:

The 1960’s to 80’s were the golden years for Benotto bicycles. By the mid 80’s Benotto riders took impressive victories including 11 world championships and countless local, national and international races such as the Giro d’italia. In 1968 Ole Ritter famously broke the hour record while riding a Benotto bicycle. He road a staggering 48.653 km in one hour. It took four years before the great cyclist Eddy Merckx was eventually able to beat that hour distance riding 49.431 kms. (source:Wikipedia)

We bought this frameset from a friended bikeshop owner Thomas de Vos (a.k.a. Vossi.nl).

It was fitted with a dura ace 7200EX headset and bottom bracket. As you can see on the photos it still has the Dura-Ace decal on the seat tube. In combination with the Portacatena dropouts, With some help from Facebook connections we got to date this frameset to early 1978, it has the old style Columbus SL decal which changed in ’78. Keep in mind that De Rosa and Benotto were close friends back in the day.

Benotto 3000 1978

This frame was made during a colaboration between Ugo De Rosa an Mr. Benotto, this one has been made in the De Rosa factory. This is not your everyday Mexican Benotto 2000 that cracks at the bottom bracket as soon as you think about riding it…

• Columbus SL tubing
• Campagnolo portacatena dropouts
• diamond shaped chainstay (like De Rosa)
• damaged seatlug (will be restored)
• 56ct 55cc toptube

future build list:

• new paint, new decals, new chrome, the original badges will be glued back on the fork
• Cinelli panto stem, handlebars and unicanitor n°3 saddle
• full super record first gen groupset with titanium pedals and steel bracket spindle patent 78
• Regina titanio freewheel and perforated oro chain
• Alfredo Binda straps (white)
• blue Benotto bar tape
• REG watterbottle holder
• a matching Sanson Gelati jersey would be nice too…

The frameset is at our local framebuilder Jan weymans right now to fix the seatlug.

Next step is to paint it in Toyota champagne which you see on the sample card below. It is a 99% match with a benotto that hasn’t seen much daylight.

update time!

the frame is back from the frambuilder, he fixed the worn out seatlug and brazed in a reanforcement bushing (appariantly they were to lazy back in the day to do that he told us). No frames that he build leave the place without a bushing in the seatlug if it is that type. and to be honest i’ve seen plenty with broken seatlugs due to the lack of a bushing like that

Now it’s only waiting for chrome and the repro decals to be made (yes we are going full in and have them reproduced, the ones available aren’t high quality and the colors are way off).

oh and in the mean time we have about 5 other benotto 3000 frames awaiting the same faith, paint, chrome and decals!

latest update!

better pictures coming soon, a sneak peak of the new paintjob