gitaneusa.com Forum Index » Owner Gallery » Gitane Super Corsa Goto page 1, 2  Next    View previous topic :: View next topic  Gitane Super Corsa   Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 6:11 pm overfedlonghairedgnome Joined: 18 Aug 2007 Posts: 64 Location: Antelope Valley, CA My Super Corsa is a late 60's or early 70's model based on the foil head tube decal and willow leaf seat stay caps. I purchased it as a frame only but still with it's original white paint and some decals. This SC came with the brake bridge in place so I retained it instead of going with Campy brakes. I am not so fond of white so I stripped the paint and had a local motorcycle custom painter do the blue and gold lug lining paint job and I was very pleased with the result, including the Cyclomondo decal set. I am still planning on adding the original foil head tube underlay. The build-up includes: Pre-73 NR Crankset, 46-50 half step chainrings, and pedals. NR seatpost, Brooks Professional saddle MAFAC Racer Brakeset, Huret cable clamps, bridge anchor by Jay Guidons Philippe Franco-Italia bars and Belleri Stem Record high flange hubs with Super Champion Arc-en-Ciel rim in the back and Record du Monde in the front Early NR front derailleur without circlip and no pivot pin extension NR rear derailleur with "Patent" but no date Zefal competition pump S/N is 2529 Restoring this Super Corsa has been the most rewarding bicycle build I have done. I am very pleased to show it off! Jim _________________ Jim The overfed long haired leaping gnome   Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 4:54 am greyhundguy Joined: 09 Apr 2008 Posts: 678 Location: South-Central VIRGINIA Jim, And you should be pleased! Beautiful restoration!!! Have you found a source for the foil? I believe some places like Hobby Lobby or Michaels have a stick on silver Mylar foil that can be used for the head tube. Please add a full view photo of the right side of the bike. Congratulations. Jay _________________ Dance like nobody is watching.   Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 5:18 am sandranian Site Admin Joined: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 2701 Location: Southern California Very nice job. It must be a blast to ride. _________________ Stephan Andranian Costa Mesa, CA www.gitaneusa.com   Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 11:18 am verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area greyhundguy wrote: Have you found a source for the foil? I believe some places like Hobby Lobby or Michaels have a stick on silver Mylar foil that can be used for the head tube. As I mentioned in another post, Mylar foil was developed in the 60s for use on space satellites. They made huge balloons out of foil coated Mylar that were visible from earth with the naked eye. I think that they bounced radar signals off of them. Self adhesive Mylar foil became commercially available in the US about the mid 60s. It was a short lived craze and was soon considered cheap and tacky looking. From the late 50s through the 60s "candy apple" (flamboyant) paint jobs on custom cars were all the rage. Part of the attraction besides the appearance was the difficulty in getting uniform layers of lacquer. In the late 60s both of these affectations caught the eye of some French bike manufacturers Gitane being the most wide spread: if a little is good, too much is better! We frequently peeled off the silver foil seat tube decals because they got damaged by the wheels rolling around in the shipping boxes. Same thing with the top tube Service Course decals. They looked tacky on a new bike when they were damaged! We had stacks of replacement decals for the Gran Sport bikes but the silver foil decals used on the racing models were unavailable. In the early 70s I removed all of the Gitane decals except those on head and down tubes on both of the Super Corsas that I had. I didn't want to be laughed out of the peloton by all those posers riding flashy Italian rigs! Times have changed. I spent $80 for a couple of sets of reproduction foil decals and another $40 to have a local frame painter apply one of the sets to my ~1972 Super Corsa. BTW, my guess is that the foil head tube was only used for a few years during the late 60s. The white Super Corsa pictured in the 1970 US Gitane catalog has it. I only recall seeing 1 or 2 bikes with it back in the day and they were customer's bikes in for service. It was probably the first victim of the Bike Boom, it had to take a long time to put on. Chas. Looks original!   Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 11:23 am verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area John, You did a great job, it looks very original, like an early 70s Gitane should look! Chas.   Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 11:45 am sandranian Site Admin Joined: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 2701 Location: Southern California speaking of foil tape, didn't a certain family aiming to land a reality show deal have a bunch of that stuff??? _________________ Stephan Andranian Costa Mesa, CA www.gitaneusa.com   Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:01 pm verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area sandranian wrote: speaking of foil tape, didn't a certain family aiming to land a reality show deal have a bunch of that stuff??? Like I said, cheap and tacky! Chas.   Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 1:13 pm greyhundguy Joined: 09 Apr 2008 Posts: 678 Location: South-Central VIRGINIA Jim, So now that you know (thanks to Chas.) the history of Mylar foil, you can go get some inexpensive, adhesive foil from your local hobby shop or online so that you can complete your Super Corsa as it was. Looking forward to the completed bike. Jay _________________ Dance like nobody is watching. Balloon Boy! Ugh!   Posted: Mon Nov 16, 2009 5:23 pm overfedlonghairedgnome Joined: 18 Aug 2007 Posts: 64 Location: Antelope Valley, CA Thanks for all the kind words. The SC does ride exceptionally smooth, even though I have only ridden it so far with old clinchers and I am SO looking forward to riding it on the sew-ups. I sized everything off my other bikes so that within the first minutes of my first spin around the block I could tell that the SC fit and performed really well. It climbs like a dream and I hope to put many miles on it. I had hoped that Greg Softely (cyclomondo) would respond to my email soon. I sent him the original head tube "mylar" that I was able to peel off the frame. He volunteered to make a proper foil decal. If not soon then I will invent my own and update the pictures. Someday I would like to have some of those nice period correct accessories like a TA handlebar water bottle cage. _________________ Jim The overfed long haired leaping gnome Re: Balloon Boy! Ugh!   Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 6:16 pm Kinst VonSterga Joined: 26 May 2008 Posts: 153 Location: Hillsboro, Oregon USA overfedlonghairedgnome wrote: Someday I would like to have some of those nice period correct accessories like a TA handlebar water bottle cage. I was thinking the same thing last week. I hope you can find one cheaper that my ebay purchase cost $45 NOS The only thing I'm going to replace is the stem (don't trust old Pivo's from snapping) and the handlebars as they're all sub 42cm in width. Either the Europeans have women-like torsos or they like to ride with some peculiar wrist angles on the bars (as 46cm width bars seem to be a natural fit ... and I'm just an average 6' in height). ps. Great choice of colors as I always thought the light blue was beautiful on a bicycle. Nice job w/the restoration! Re: Balloon Boy! Ugh!   Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 6:28 pm greyhundguy Joined: 09 Apr 2008 Posts: 678 Location: South-Central VIRGINIA Kinst VonSterga wrote: I was thinking the same thing last week. I hope you can find one cheaper than my ebay purchase cost $45 NOS That's the going rate for a NOS TA handle bar cage. I watched and bid for months trying to get one for less. I gave up and paid the $45. This is another of the French items that the Japanese collectors go after. Jay _________________ Dance like nobody is watching. Re: Balloon Boy! Ugh!   Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 11:56 pm verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area greyhundguy wrote: That's the going rate for a NOS TA handle bar cage. I watched and bid for months trying to get one for less. I gave up and paid the $45. This is another of the French items that the Japanese collectors go after. Jay I have 2 of them, NOS from back in the day... They were expensive even then, maybe $15.00 each??? Sometimes back in New Mexico we rode with 3 water bottles on 50+ mile rides. I'd have 1 TA handle bar cage on each side of the stem and a 3rd cage on the down tube. When alloy cages became the rage, I moved away from the chrome plated steel TA cages but I hung on to these 2 just in case. Back before electrolyte replacements were readily available, I used to mix up my own concoction: a can of condensed tomato paste mixed with water in one of my bottles. During a 100 mile race one time, someone rode up next to me and grabbed one of my bottles out of my HB cage and doused himself with it! No one ever touched any of my water bottles after that! Chas. Re: Balloon Boy! Ugh!   Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 9:20 am Kinst VonSterga Joined: 26 May 2008 Posts: 153 Location: Hillsboro, Oregon USA [quote="verktyg"] greyhundguy wrote: No one ever touched any of my water bottles after that! Chas. LOL!   Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 9:43 am sandranian Site Admin Joined: 27 Feb 2006 Posts: 2701 Location: Southern California verktyg wrote: Back before electrolyte replacements were readily available, I used to mix up my own concoction: a can of condensed tomato paste mixed with water in one of my bottles. Chas. Yuck. Why not just use Coke ("Coca-Cola", thank you) or lemonade? Or were you a "V8" guy??? Again...yuk. _________________ Stephan Andranian Costa Mesa, CA www.gitaneusa.com   Posted: Thu Nov 19, 2009 1:42 pm verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area sandranian wrote: verktyg wrote: Back before electrolyte replacements were readily available, I used to mix up my own concoction: a can of condensed tomato paste mixed with water in one of my bottles. Chas. Yuck. Why not just use Coke ("Coca-Cola", thank you) or lemonade? Or were you a "V8" guy??? Again...yuk. Coke, Pepsi and all of the other colas don't have any electrolytes. They are mostly water with sugar, caffeine, phosphoric acid, flavorings and carbon dioxide! A couple that I used to ride with lived with her brother who was a world class runner. All three of them used to drink pure Coca-Cola syrup - now that's YUK! Lemonade is water, sugar and minimum amounts of a few electrolytes. V8 is mostly water too. Now, tomato paste was great! It contained a lot of natural sugar, some important electrolytes plus vitamins and minerals. It was concentrated so when mixed with water it had the consistency of watery ketchup in my H2O bottles! Besides, it was a natural pest deterrent! Chas. 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