Originally Posted by
rekmeyata
What a cool looking bike, I love that. The geometry does seem a bit odd, you have a very compact rake on the fork and head tube almost straight up and down, but the rear rake has a touring rake by todays standards. And does the rear stay spoons wrapped entirely around the seat tube?
Don't you ever sell that bike.
Thanks for the complement!
I added a "before" photo below, with the original, hardened Henri Gautier saddle.
You can see that someone positioned the TDF derailer cage upside-down, as if it were a modern derailer, and the brake levers appear to possibly have been modified by bending(?).
The original, too-short seatpost is aluminum and wasn't stuck frozen iir.
The original chain was Yellorex by Sedis, the racing standard at the time.
Gearing was 50-47 and 14-16-18-20, since revised to 50-45 and 14-17-20-24.
Brakes are LAM, still with rock-hard pads in the photo below.
The seatstay ends are almost full-wrap, with just 4-5mm between tips.
By "touring rake" or "rear rake", do you mean the chainstay length?
The seat tube angle on this bike is also super-steep at around 77 degrees, which helps this 56cm frame feel a little longer ahead of the bottom bracket, a good thing since the stem reach is only 8 or 9cm.
Looking at photos, the frame angles often aren't represented accurately, due to parallax and fisheye lens effects, but I've measured the frame's angles and they are crazy-steep, just like some of the 1975-1976 Peugeot PX10's angles (the ones usually referred to as Thevenet-era or LE-model geometry).
The steep angles really help the bike to climb steep hills even with the limited 8-speed (4X2) gearing.
This bike changed hands 3 times for zero cash, and the guy who gave it to me insisted that I not modify it.
It was picked up 4 years ago (for free) by a garage sale-searching thrift store owner, who gave it to my cyclist friend, who gave it to me.
BEFORE:
And AFTER:
