Panasonic Bicycles Virtual Museum

If not for bad luck… losing my head”set”

Building a vintage bike from the ground up takes some time and money. Hunting on eBay only to get sniped at the buzzer is common. I was therefore quite pleased when I received a Dura Ace HP-7410 headset for my PR-6000 as a Christmas gift from my parents. I’ll admit I had shot them the link to the eBay auction back in November of ’09 but it was just one of those suggestions that I had forgotten about.

Lucky me, I got it for a Christmas gift. It was supposedly NOS (new old stock) and came in the Shimano box taped shut with the Shimano tape. Can you guess where I’m going with this one?
Since I wasn’t ready to actually build the bike I set the box with my other parts… that was until a few days ago when I opened it up to discover the following…

Yes, that was literally all that was in the box. It was definitely bring your alcohol to work day in Japan on the day the Shimano crew boxed this headset! I wound up with two upper races, no lower race, no lock nut or washer etc. To add salt on the wound, this was $96 worth of parts I couldn’t even use. I discovered that the headset came from a retailer just up the road in Minnesota called Crosslake Sales. At the time of writing this, I’ve sent them an e-mail explaining my saga but since it took so long to discover I don’t really have a leg to stand on unless they have customer service above and beyond anything I’ve seen before. Fingers crossed?

Stay tuned… to be continued?

*** UPDATE: Feb. 10th, 2010 ***

I think I just found an eBay seller with “ROCK STAR” customer service! Not only did I get a response from them in the evening (after biz hours) but they have offered to give me a refund if I return the headset. Keep in mind, I received this as a gift on Dec. 25th but it was purchased on eBay back on Nov. 21st of 2009. The problem wasn’t discovered until early Feb. 2010. The fact that Crosslake Sales is willing to work with me on this one is nothing short of amazing to me. Two big thumbs up to them!

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Project PR-6000

Living here in the U.S. I always wished Panasonic would have continued to be sold here after the 1989 model year. The primary desire for this was that I had become aware of the Panasonic PR-6000 model in the beautiful Team Colors and really wished I could buy one here. With Panasonic out of the picture for me in terms of buying options I moved on to another “P” bike… a Pinarello Paris with Campagnolo Record Carbon.

Now, just because my modern day wheels happen to be Italian doesn’t mean I stopped wanting that PR-6000 or something like it. Luckily for me, the creation of this web site led to some international friendships. One such friend is Melvin from the Netherlands.

While checking my email one afternoon I saw a message from Melvin. To my surprise he had sent me a link to what looked to be a nearly new-old-stock PR-6000 frame and fork being offered on a Dutch classified site. I did the math and found the asking price to be surprisingly affordable. I wanted it.

I wouldn’t have this frame and fork today if not for Melvin’s assistance. He not only helped me out with language translation, but he even contacted the seller on my behalf. The seller didn’t want to mess with shipping to America so Melvin went above and beyond… he purchased the frame and had it shipped to his home then performed an incredible packing job before sending it to me. He didn’t even ask for payment from me until the frame was ready to ship. Yes, there truly are some great people left in this world. Thank you Melvin!

So I now own a frame I have wanted for many years thanks to a little help from the Panasonic enthusiast community. The odd thing about my particular frame is that it appears to be made from Tange 1 tubing rather than the Tange Prestige tubing usually found on PR-6000 models. This is in fact the first time I have seen one without Prestige tubing. Very peculiar but I still love it.

I intend to build it up as close to factory original as possible so it will likely be a long term build as I hunt around the internet for the proper components. I’ll post progress updates here on the site from time to time.

Finally, I know you’d all rather see pictures than read my babble… so here they are!

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