AND A VITUS 979 FOR LUCAS AGED 11

I bought my son a Jamis hybrid bike a few years ago, but he's going to outgrow it soon, so when I saw this 50cm Vitus going cheap in France (complete except for wheels) I thought it might be worth seeing if he'd take to it. 

It was in decent nick and after a bit of a tidy ended up looking like this. 

It has an indexed Shimano 105 SLX gearset and brakes, a Stronglight chainset, and I found a nice set of wheels with Shimano 600 hubs in excellent condition. Better kit than my Vitus in fact. 

It looks great and even received a complement from the normally hard-to-please Nick Van Vader at The London Cycle Workshop. He actually wanted to buy it as it fitted him perfectly. No comment. 

The chainset has typical cyclo cross gearing (46/34) which happens to be ideal for an 11 year old. I don't think it was a cross bike, but who knows. 

Lucas is getting used to the downtube shifters, although he hasn't tackled any hills yet. To be honest, he'd probably prefer STI levers, but that's tough :(

MY VITUS 979 READY FOR L'ÉROICA BRITANNIA

The Vitus 979 'restoration' is now complete.

Nick in The London Cycle Workshop swapped the Ofmega triple chainset and Deore front derailleur (early nineties) for an eighties quite rare Shimano 600 Tri Colour triple chainset and vintage 105 triple derailleur. I tried to find a 600 front mech for a triple but couldn't track one down. I've heard that they do exist. If you have one, let me know!

Brooks bartape and Open Corsa tyres provided the finishing touches and although I'm still looking for a vintage Brooks Swallow saddle, I think the results look pleasing on the eye.

See previous post for more details of the build.

I used to be a bit of a Campag snob (not that I knew what I was talking about) but now have a bit of a thing for Suntour and some of the earlier Shimano groupsets. The 'Tri Colour' version of Shimano 600 looks especially neat.
600 became Ultegra, as you probably know.
The build is mainly 105 (derailleurs, shifters, hubs, brake calipers & levers), with the 600 triple chainset being the only correct period triple I could source.

I managed last year's Eroica Britannia on a very heavy Koga Miyata 'Gents Tourer' (just about), so the reasoning behind getting a triple wasn't so much for getting me round L'Eroica but more that I could keep the 12-24 gearing, and will now have a vintage bike 'for life'. I'm 58 at the time of writing, and now I won't need to swap to a triple when the legs start complaining.
Finally, the saddle will be swapped from my Brooks that is currently on my Surly.
And a Brooks saddle bag will complete the set up.