(metallic whooshing)
- It's a long process.
It starts from the light.
We have the idea, we have the need,
because there are several reasons why you need a new bike.
And then we start.
- After spending quite some time
on the Wilier Triestina stand at the recent Eurobike show,
the staff asked me would I like to come
and visit them at their HQ,
here in Bassano del Grappa.
And what with them releasing
two pretty cool bikes this year,
both the Zero SLR and the Cento10 Hy,
who was I to turn down an invitation like this?
But their story started quite some time ago.
Let's go inside and have a look.
(hypnotic EDM music)
A quick trip down memory lane, then.
Well, Wilier was actually founded way back in 1906
and actually focused on making normal, everyday bikes
because cycling was seen as a method of transport.
Now, Wilier, they stayed true to those roots
up until just after the Second World War,
at which point they decided to enter the road racing game
and take things very seriously,
including sponsoring a team
that included this guy, Fiorenzo Magni,
an absolute legend within the sport of cycling
and here's why.
Now, you can be forgiven if you've never heard of Magni,
the reason being his career was largely overshadowed
by two fellow Italians,
Gino Bartali and also Fausto Coppi,
who were busy battling it out elsewhere.
Now, there's a really iconic image actually of Magni,
who was riding a mountain time trial,
and he had an inner tube held in between his teeth
and the other end
was actually wrapped around the handlebars,
enabling him to pull up
and still be able to release some power.
Now that image, iconic as it is,
he's also got some results to back it up, too.
He won the Giro d'Italia three times.
He won the Tour of Flanders three times.
If that doesn't impress you,
the Tour of Flanders victories were in a row,
a hat trick, onboard this very bike.
Now, the bikes used by Magni and his teammates
back in the late 40s and early 50s
were advertised as 100% copper.
True, but not strictly true.
They're actually copper-plated.
But how?
Well, the frame builder decided
to chrome-plate the tube sets
and then they put it in a bath
of translucent colored copper paint
and I'm led to believe through electrolysis,
that paint was actually attracted onto the frame
and stayed there in place.
Electrifying stuff, quite literally.
It became almost like a trademark of Wilier
and this red copper appearance,
in as much that's it's got his own name, Ramata.
This one here is about 80 years old
and it's, well, stood a fairly good test of time.
But over here, we've got a modern remake
of that finish,
and I'm sure you'll agree, it looks beautiful.
Sadly, the use of bicycles took a really big decline
in Italy during the 1950s.
And in 1958, the doors actually closed due to this here,
motorcycles and scooters.
They took favor in terms of transportation
over a bike and it's quite ironic, really,
they've got one parked up
next to one of their delivery vans or something like that.
But 11 years later, 1969, the Gastaldello brothers,
they bought the name and they re-entered the market.
And since then, they've had loads of big achievements.
Think Cunego, think Alessandro Ballan, Marco Pantani,
Scarponi, Alessandro Petacchi, Sylvain Chavanel.
Need I go on?
Now we're at the modern day.
(upbeat EDM music)
Now, this modern day includes the new Zero SLR
that Ollie took a first look at a few months ago
and also this, the Cento10 Hy, an eBike, believe it or not,
that actually just won an award in the Eurobike show
for design and innovation.
Pretty well-hidden there, the cables,
and also integration was one of the key things
that jury noted on.
Now, it is an eBike, like I've just said,
but they've marketed it as a hybrid bike
because they believe it's actually two bikes in one.
Because once you take out these wheels
and you replace them with some standard wheels,
remember, this one's got a hub-based motor,
you're going to have a normal bike, let's face it.
And also quite an impressively light one,
just over seven kilos,
because this bike with the motor in it and also the battery
is just 10.2 kilos.
That's pretty impressive.
Now, if you're anything like me,
you're probably wondering how does a bike
go from concept to consumer?
Well, let's go and find out.
- It's a big team of people involved.
Everybody puts his own ideas.
And then finally we say, okay, that's the target.
It must be light, it must be aero,
it depends the model you're looking for,
and then, yes, start the big story.
The first thing is about the sizes.
What we are talking about?
It's a racing machine?
Okay, let's start to fix what must be
the length of the frame, the angles, whatever.
If it's endurance, of course it will be longer or shorter.
First of all, we set about
and then we start to talk about the shape.
If it's aero, we start to talk about the neck profile.
It normally means truncated neck profile.
So we have a small wind tunnel where we get some profile.
It's a process.
Step by step, we try to find for every single tubing,
every single detail, the right design.
There are some tests that must be made
to get the EN standard, to follow the EN standard.
But, of course, we are a little bit more strict,
so we make a longer, heavier test than EN standard
to be 100% safe.
The teams is very important.
They push us to get, they want everything super light,
super stiff, super everything.
I remember years ago really push us to get a new TT
and we come out with the Twin Blade.
It was something really special for that year.
And then also for example, also the new Zero SLR.
Yes, the input of the team was okay,
this is something that is coming but today is too heavy.
So yeah, let's make a light 6.8 disc.
And that's what's coming, the new Zero SLR, in fact.
So okay, now we just work on the super light.
The future is something different
than super light, of course.
- Wilier's frames are all made in the Far East,
with the exception of one, the Superleggera,
which is a steel bike
and it's still made here in Bassano del Grappa,
and that even comes in that Ramata-style paint work,
if it tickles your fancy.
A couple of reasons, then,
why the frames are made out there in the Far East.
Firstly, manufacturing experience.
They've been doing it for a very long time now.
And secondly, new manufacturing processes.
They tend to be discovered in the Far East quicker
than anywhere else in the world,
which can only be good news
for a bike geek like me, I reckon.
Now, once these frames arrive back here to Wilier HQ,
there's a service which is offered called Infinitamente,
or something like that anyway,
and it's a custom color process,
which allows you to customize your bike online
to your exact requirements.
Now, if you're like me,
you could probably waste hours designing your ideal bike
or you could go one step further
and have that Ramata-style paint work or also Cromovelato.
Now, the folks here at Wilier,
they're pretty good when it comes to painting bikes
and they wanted to show me how they did theirs,
so let's go and have a look.
So the painting isn't actually done at the HQ
because obviously you need some specialist equipment.
And I said to them, "do you know what,
"I quite fancy having a go at this today."
For some reason, they didn't seem very keen.
Can't think why.
Right, so the first stage then of this journey
obviously is a big production line here
and I don't want to interrupt too much.
But we first will have
the nude carbon frames and forks sent here,
as well as the handlebars too,
because they also spray those, a multi-stage process.
Let's have a look at the next stage,
which is actually the preparation of the frame and fork.
So when the frames are actually released from their molds,
they're very often left
with just a little bit of residue on them,
which is perfectly normal,
but in order for that paint to actually stick onto it,
the frames need to be prepped really, really well.
So behind me, there's a team who are sanding down
frames, forks, handlebars.
This is such a labor-intensive process, believe me.
If you get this one step wrong,
the rest of the steps are going to be terrible
because it just does not work.
It's part of the ecosystem, if you like,
of the actual painting process.
So when they're sanding down the various different frames,
they're actually using different grits of sandpaper.
So they start off with quite a coarse one, I guess,
and then end up with something very fine.
The reason behind this, you want it to be super smooth
so there's no grooves, there's no ridges, nothing like that,
so the next stage of the process is much easier.
That next stage is priming the frame.
So sadly I missed them getting primed but here they are.
But then, just over my shoulder,
I've got some chrome-style forks.
Now, these chrome forks that are in there,
they're not actual chrome.
Instead, it's a Cromovelato-style finish.
So that means, basically, it's a silvery,
reflective-style paint on top of the carbon.
The frames are also done in it, too.
Now, the reason they've done this
is because the topcoat of paint,
which is called Admiral Blue, is quite translucent
and it allows that silver to really pop through.
Something which I have picked up on though
is when they're mixing the paint
and putting it into the actual paint gun itself,
they use some filter paper,
similar to what we would use
when you're making a coffee or something like that,
which means that there's no lumps or bumps
coming through into the canister,
which allows a nice, even flow.
Now, obviously, we're not going to sit here
and watch the frames dry
because that's literally like watching paint dry.
Instead, we're going to go to the next stage,
which is applying the decals, or decals,
depending on where you come from.
(rhythmic jazz drumming)
Right, I've got a big sheet here of different decals.
Each bike, of course, does have its own model name
so you need to make sure you put the right ones
on the right bike because they are painting
all sorts of different models here.
Now, it is labor-intensive, again,
because everything is done by hand.
I don't think I'd be very good at this
because it involves a huge amount of precision
with lining things up because, remember,
it is for a consumer at the end of the day.
Once that's done, though, we go back into the spray booth
for another part of painting.
And this is the lacquering process.
So by this, it means we're going to have a nice clear coat
on top of the frame, so you can see that paint work
and it's going to be protected too
from any stones that may well flick up off the road
and, importantly, seal in those decals
that have been painstakingly applied by hand.
Once the lacquer is on, well,
just to speed up the drying process,
it's moved into this sort of giant very low-heat oven,
just to bake it in place.
Right then, we've got a primed frame.
We've got a painted frame.
We've got a decaled frame.
We've got a lacquered frame.
It's nice and dry.
It's ready to go.
No, it's not.
Oh, no, no, no.
The next stage is actually (motor whirring) the polishing.
So check this out here.
We've got a little buffing wheel
controlled by air, always good.
A little of polishing compound would go on here
and then gently go over the frame
to remove any tiny little imperfections
before the final bit, where it goes in that box,
down the road, and, well, it gets built up.
Let's go and take a look at that.
We're back then with the frame,
decaled, painted, lacquered, all of that.
What happens next though?
Well, if you've ordered just a frameset,
it's going to get boxed up, sent out to the dealer,
and you can assemble and build that yourself.
But if you've ordered one of those hybrid bikes,
so an eBike, or a mid to high-end road bike,
that's where these lot come in handy.
(relaxed ska music)
So we've got two teams of mechanics here.
Firstly, we've got a guy who's normally here
who's just having a quick break
who is assembling wheels all day, every day.
So he's putting on rim tapes, innertubes,
tires, cassettes, reflectors.
You name it, he's dealing with that.
And then he's seating them on
with this quite fancy machine there.
Then there's eight mechanics up here
who are working on these work stations,
which are pretty cool.
I've never seen anything like this.
I've not been to very many factories.
But they're essentially on rails or a track,
so when they finish one job, they can wheel it around
or scoot it around to their colleague,
who can finish off and do that next step in the journey.
And with bikes being more and more complex,
I guess you could say, with internal routing and everything,
having it put together
by someone who does it all day, every day
is way easier than trying to do it yourself,
at least for me.
Now, it's not quite as straight forward
as just assembling bikes all day, every day.
Other things have to be considered too, such as brakes.
Yep, something as simple as that.
In the UK, we don't have our brakes
like they have in Italy, for instance,
and with a big international market,
these things really have to be considered.
(relaxed ska music)
Now, once the bikes have been test ridden by the mechanics,
they're then passed over to this pair behind me,
who then take them apart very slightly
and wrap them up securely
before them putting them into a cardboard box.
It's really well-built, believe me.
You see a lot of people
traveling through airports with these.
And the rest, really, is left with the dealer, I guess,
where they put on some handlebar tape,
put the wheels in, turn the bars,
and then you're ready to ride.
(relaxed ska music)
There we go!
We're near the end because now we're in good sights.
The bike is about to begin its journey off to that dealer,
so one happy cyclist can go and collect their new bicycle.
Let me know what you thought about this video
down there in the comments section below.
Personally, when I was invited out here,
I didn't know what to expect.
I thought I was going to find a fairly small warehouse
or factory, something like that.
Instead, I've been greeted
with a really state of the art facility
but with loads of old memorabilia hanging about.
And, well, I've been getting these grubby little hands
all over it.
Let me know down there in the comments section
what your favorite bit has been though.
And also remember to check out the GCN shop
at shop.globalcyclingnetwork.com.
We've got a whole heap of goods for you to check out.
And now for two more great videos,
how 'about clicking just over here and just over here?
And me, I'm going to go and do my hair
in that Cromovelato paint work.