It is curb side collection in my local area soon, so the the streets are lined with everyone's pre-loved crap. Anyway, I was driving home from the movies and thought I'd detour around the back streets to my home just in case I could end my quest for a suitable fixie frame. You wouldn't believe how stoked I was when I drove past a pile of stuff with an old cruddy looking bike sticking out the side. Enter the Centurion.
Now for the history. I turned to the internetz to see if anyone had made one of these bad boys into a hip fixie and stumbled across a website that an avid Centurion fan had devoted to the history of this brand of bike and everything associated with them. The website has everything from frame tube construction to how many layers of paint each model of bike received. I was looking to see if I could find my bike model and when it was made.
I had planned on making an awesome crack about how lucky I was to have picked up a forced induction model rather than the regular (and obviously lower powered) naturally aspirated model. But according to some research from my new mate's website, The Turbo model was one of the highest quality competition racing models of the early-mid 80's. From the original centurion catalogue (unbiased review lol):
"Introducing the new Turbo for 1984. The full race Centurion that's sending our competitors back to the drawing board. We've spared no expense to make the Turbo our best."
The guy from the website rates it as the best Centurion bike pre 84 and the third best they ever made.
I could go on for ages about a bunch of rad little features this bike has but I'd start to blabber so here is a quick rundown:
- Centurion Turbo 1983/1984
- Designed in the USA, Manufactured in Japan
- Manganese Alloy Tange tubing (apparently some of the straightest, strongest and most expensive tubing available at the time.)
- 2.2kg frame
The frame has a bit of rust, especially in one particular part toward where the top tube connects to the head tube. This doesn't fill me with confidence because I've read the tubing has a 0.8mm wall thickness, may have to graft some new tube. At this stage I'm thinking I'll paint it the Mazda red that I painted one of talksteer's 'exo-shells', it just looks so good in the sun. There is a lot of work before that happens anyway.
This is part of the original Centurion product catalogue, some of it is quite funny actually.
A couple more snaps:
Brad
That is unbelievably awesome! cant believe its a turbo as well! Those bars are crazy too. Great find mate! Bring on the build pics.
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