Building a Miguel Indurain replica Banesto Pinarello

Miguel Indurain

Miguel was the king of the Tour de France in the '90s, winning five times consecutively. He was one of my teenage cycling idols, and coincidentally he and I share almost the same bike measurements; however, the similarities end there! I always thought it would be a fun project to build an every-day-rider that was an Indurain Pinarello Banesto replica. Below is the process I went through to get my "Big Mig" bike up and running.

The frame

The heart of any bike is obviously the frame. I found this 90's Pinarello Asolo for a steal on eBay from Austria. Pinarello is a brand close to my heart as they were the bike sponsor of the very first pro team I ever rode for, De Nardi. The team was an absolute disaster, but I lived close to the Pinarello factory in Treviso (where this frame was built). When I visited a few times, the folks there were always incredibly friendly and helpful. I also had the fortune to meet Giovanni Pinarello at their shopfront in downtown Treviso. The Asolo model is named after a small town in Veneto that I passed through many times on training rides, so this frame brought back a great deal of nostalgia for me, and I thought it would be perfect. The paint and decals were obviously incorrect for this project, so the frame shipped out to my friend Alan Wanta in FL for a makeover.

I also had Alan remove the pump peg and add a brazed on number holder.

The seatpost

The first component I sourced for the build was this very sad Record / C-Record seatpost that was destined for the trash. It was pitted and had bite marks on it where it appeared to have been clamped in a vise, most probably to remove it from a frame it was seized in. A couple of nights in the garage with a Dremel, some sandpaper, and a polishing wheel got it looking almost as good as new again.

The saddle

During the '90s, Miguel always used a Selle Italia Turbomatic saddle. This was another eBay find, and some leather polish got it looking good again.

The wheels

After the frame, the next most important part of any bike is the wheels. On Facebook Marketplace, I found a pair of 90's Record hubs, built into wheels with rims that were no longer round. I cut out the hubs, polished them, and repacked them with fresh grease. eBay again came up with the goods with a pair of Campagnolo Moskva 80 rims that would fit the bill perfectly. The parts went off to my good friend and wheel building maestro Peter Chisholm to be built.

Wheels - finished product

Cables

The parts drawer delivered, and a friendly reminder to never use anything other than Campagnolo inner cable in a Campagnolo shifter. A stuck cable head is no joke.

Ergopower Levers

These aren't strictly the correct levers, but they were the best thing I could find without breaking the budget. They are a pair of 95-ish Chorus levers that were pretty battle-scarred. Some sanding and polishing got the lever blades looking good again, I already had some rubber hoods in decent shape, and my buddy Peter rebuilt the internals, so the shifts were crisp again. They are like grandfather's axe, a new handle, and new axe head, but it's still grandfather's axe!

Coca-Cola Tour de France number plate

In the 1990's Coke was a major sponsor of the Tour de France, and every rider had one of these number plates on their bike. A trip to Michael's for some supplies, some Coca-Cola stickers from Etsy, and a night of arts and crafts got this reproduction of Indurain's number 1 knocked up.

Bidon, cage, and tape.

This Coca-Cola Tour de France bidon came to me from Belgium and is exactly what would have been used in the 90s tours. The Elite bottle cage was pretty much the only cage to use in that era. The handlebar tape is my favorite; it's modern Fizik tape but is plain perforated white and looks great on any bike. I thought the Banesto bar plugs would be a nice touch, and they came from an eBay seller in the UK.

Bars and stem

The bars and stem were some of the most challenging parts of this project. A pretty big fella, Indurain used 46cm ITM bars which actually measure 44cm center to center. He never used the "anatomic" shaped bars, so this round "non-anatomic" set took a while to track down. His bikes were built with a 59cm top tube, but the Pinarello frame I sourced had a 58cm top tube, so I would need a 140mm stem to make it fit.

After months of searching, finding the correct ITM 400 stem in black and 140mm length proved impossible. I eventually found this lovely ITM 700 stem that was the next best thing, but the problem was that it was in South Africa! A dear old friend in SA did all the leg work, tracked down the stem, and bought it for me. Then, in a perfect twist of fate, another mutual good friend of ours finally got his US residency after a long wait and brought the stem over on his immigration pilgrimage to the US!

Time pedals

Miguel used Time pedals in the '90s. They were a controversial product at the time as pedals with a lot of float like the Times were not popular yet. This pair set me back a whopping $5 at Veloswap in Denver.

Record 8 speed rear derailleur

I had no idea of the issues I would have finding the correct 8sp Record rear derailleur! The main problem is that many derailleurs from this era end up cracking on the top of the body where the attachment bolt passes through. Many people told me that they had used these derailleurs, with the crack, for years and years with no issues. But I wanted a nice (uncracked) one for this bike! However, almost every one I found or saw come up on eBay had the classic crack.

There were also minor differences between the 92,93 and 94 models, even though they look almost identical. In 93, the Record derailleur seemed virtually identical to the 92, only it has an entirely different thread size on the cable adjuster. The 94 is again almost identical to the 93, but the sealed bearing pulley wheels (like mine above) were dropped in 94 for pulley wheels with bushings. I am reasonably (but not completely) sure I have a 93 Record 8sp rear derailleur.

Other bits and pieces

After that bloke from Texas had his TDF wins scrapped from the books, every Tour in the 90's was won on Campagnolo Record. It was a bit of a weird conglomeration of stuff in the early/mid 90's, there were the ground breaking Ergopower levers and dual pivot brakes that Campagnolo came up with to compete against Shimano's Dura-Ace STI, but some of the parts like the crankset, headset and front derailleur were parts that were simply carried over from the C-Record groupset. Those components had already been in use since the mid-late 80s. But to me, this was the end of the Campagnolo golden era; none of the parts had model names, which just added to the mystery and required a solid education in Campagnolo to decipher one model group from another.

In 1995 Campagnolo rolled out their low-profile cranks and a bunch of new parts for the Record groupset. They also started printing the model name on most components, which completely killed the fun, if you ask me! This is one of the things that makes these 92-94 components some of my absolute favorites.

Here I must confess that the bottom bracket I used is a much more modern Campagnolo Veloce model that was made for that 9-speed group. A correct 111mm Record bottom bracket is quite a tricky item to find, and I happened to have a few of these Veloce bb's that I stockpiled a few years ago when I found them for a "never to be repeated" price!

Everything ready... time to build!