Not So Well Adapted

I'm resurrecting the old Colnago Master Olympic and figured I'd adapt the 1" headset to something new and fat. As in something that will take a 31.8 bar fat. I did some research and decided that the Nitto was too much for too little, Dimension was ugly and heavy, and Deda was just right. I put my order in and then patiently awaited my new bridge to tomorrow.

I installed the Deda adapter at the appropriate height and slapped a stem and bars on and had a look. Aaauuuuugghh!!!!! WTF? The elegant transition from the sparkling Record headset to that old 1" quill stem was replaced by some inbred, reject cousin with an adam's apple the size of a grapefruit. Repulsive.

I had some reservations about the quill adapters for quite some time but finally figured I was just being curmudgeony. Now, I know I wasn't being a curmudeon, I was enlightened. The only way these abominations look halfway respectable on a bike is to have your stem slammed, ala MM and his trusty rawhide mallet. And that usually says to me that your bike doesn't fit so well, or the rider concentrated too much on the stems surrounding him in the 4's race as opposed to the finish line.

As quickly as I had the adapter installed, it was pulled out and replaced with an old ITM 105mm 1" quill with that familiar 26.0mm hole for the bars. Now that's classy.