Sami Al-Khayat of Wolken talks Cyclist through his one-of-a-kind reworked vintage Rossin frame
Words Paddy Maddison Photography Patrik Lundin
When self-confessed bike nerd Sami Al-Khayat was gifted a mysterious vintage frame just days before he was due to appear at handmade bicycle show Bespoked, he knew he had to do something special with it. Passed on to him by a friend, the old Rossin frame was unlike anything he had seen before. It looked like a Ghibli – one of the Italian brand’s most iconic bikes that won its fair share of Grand Tour jerseys in the 1980s – but it lacked many of the model’s signature details, and featured Columbus Gilco tubing throughout.
‘My best guess is that it was a Ghibli prototype frame,’ says Al-Khayat. ‘It didn’t have the typical Rossin bottom bracket, it lacked bottle cage threads on the seat tube, and it didn’t have the internally routed rear brake cable.
‘After a lot of digging online, I managed to track down one other person with the exact same frame. He had bought it from the Rossin factory once the company had shut down, which led me to believe it’s most probably a prototype.’
Al-Khayat is no stranger to tinkering with experimental designs. In his day job as a development engineer for German cargo bike manufacturer Muli Cycles, he can often be found knocking up prototype frames of his own.
‘In my mind, Rossin most likely received some tubing samples and built up a frame quickly to test it out. This is probably why they didn’t bother with some of the finer details.’
Old bike, new life
With just five days between him and Bespoked, Al-Khayat set about stripping the frame down and carefully removing and restoring every single original tube piece by piece. His plan was to create a modern long-distance road bike to take on randonneurs, which meant re-mitering every tube to achieve his desired geometry.
‘Looking back, I don’t understand how I actually managed to do it in time,’ he laughs. ‘Every single tube was taken out – nothing was left joined together. It’s more work than just building a new frame from scratch, but I kept at it from morning to night for five days, and it ended up working out.
‘I think I saved time by taking a lot of risks, and the fact that it was a proto frame
