3alarmer,

No matter what make of bike the stem was on, it isn't French... It's an early 70s Japanese made Arai cast aluminum stem.

French stems were 21.9mm (22mm nominal). Most other stems from that era had 22.2mm quills. Some French bikes came with Japanese bars and stems on their lower priced models (plus some French steerers were sloppy enough to take and undersized 22.2mm stem).

The bars look like they have a randonneur bend and they wouldn't have been standard on a PX-10 either. They probably came with the stem when someone changed it out to get a shorter reach.

Easy way to tell the difference, early French bars are 25mm at the center. Japanese bars were 25.4mm - 1" diameter.

PX-10s from the 60s and 70s came with longer than normal length stems for the frame size because they were racing models. My all original 1967 54cm PX-10 had a 100mm AVA stem.

Barn bike PX-10 as purchased:



Early 60s PX-10 - not my bike, eBay picture:




"was never designed to last forever anyway."

The life expectancy of a "10 speed bike" back then was about 5 years with moderate (or less) use...

The US Bike Boom was a 3-4 year FAD and no one considered that these bikes would be collector's items 40-45 years on. Also in the US we were probably at the peak of the throw away culture.

Most of the bikes from that era have been reincarnated at least several times by now!

Your 1970s bike:




Check out this post for more info on death stems:

http://www.bikeforums.net/classic-vi...l#post17767500

Please see my additional posts in this thread...

verktyg

Chas.