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My beater/low end late 60's Gitane (photo heavy) 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 5:15 pm Reply with quote
scozim
Joined: 26 Sep 2008
Posts: 629
Location: Ellensburg, WA
I've posted a few times about this bike over the past 10 months. Sorry about the long story.

Last March or April the local bike shop owner emailed me and said he had "some old road bike stuff" behind his shop and I was welcome to it. I went by first thing in the morning and amid the three bike frames was what we (the folks here) have determined was a Gitane from the late 1960's. It's obviously a low end bike but is very solid.

I've been contemplating what to do with it for awhile. Last summer I picked up a 1984 Trek Mixte in great shape for $45. I bought it because the components were all Simplex and the wheelset Weinmann rims with Helicomatic hubs (I know they're the bane for some people). I sold the frame for $100 and the parts were essentially free. My plan was to use some of those Simplex parts and the wheelset on the bike. As you'll see the best made plans are often turned upside down, especially with vintage French bikes.

Here's what I picked up in the alley:



The paint has a lot of character - real rough. But it's got the original decals so I wanted to leave it alone. I've yet to find a good match for the blue for touch up paint.

The Mafac brakes were in pretty bad shape so I decided not to use them. I had some Weinmann and Dia Compe center pulls and went with the Dia Compe because they looked the best. That is until I found out they didn't have enough reach on the front - even for the 27" wheels. Time to switch gears. Fortunately, I had a set of Weinmann 730 side pull calipers that worked perfectly, so on they went.

Next were the shifters and front derailleurs. Went to run the cable and the ends were too big for the Simplex shift levers. Crap. On went a pair of Suntour power ratchet downtube shifters.

Since the shifters changed, that meant the rear derailleur would need to change (well, it didn't have to, but I wanted to make it Suntour also). I just picked up a Suntour V-GT Luxe long cage rear derailleur for $4 two weeks ago - so on it went. For now I have decided to stay with the Simplex SJA102 front derailleur.

The Nervar 52-36 cottered cranks and Lyotard pedals were really rusty and took some elbow grease to clean up. Unfortunately, I'm missing one of the Lyotard dust caps (as seen in the photo). The Pivo stem polished up ok. I tried to go with some alloy handlebars and struck out so stuck with some steel ones I had. Finally, I had to purchase an aluminum Kalloy 25.4 seatpost.

Overall, the bike turned out great. It's a Frankenbike, but I don't really care.

I still need to install the chain and fine tune it - but it's essentially done. The frame is 60 cm and too tall, so I won't be riding it much. My wife asked what I'm going to do with it. I told her I didn't know. She said it's a waste to have it laying around and not using it. My response was there aren't a lot of 40+ yo bikes in this town, especially French one, so I'm not going to get ride of it.

Ok - enough of the long wind - here's the photos:



















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1984 Gitane Sprint
1984 Gitane Tour de France
mid-1970's Gitane Olympic
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 7:59 am Reply with quote
sandranian
Site Admin
Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Posts: 2701
Location: Southern California
Nice. I am green with envy.

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Stephan Andranian
Costa Mesa, CA
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My beater/low end late 60's Gitane (photo heavy) 
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