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Old 08-22-18 | 06:53 AM
  #18  
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rustystrings61
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From: Greenwood SC USA

Bikes: 2002 Mercian Vincitore, 1982 Mercian Colorado, 1976 Puch Royal X, 1973 Raleigh Competition, 1971 Gitane Tour de France and others

Originally Posted by Charles Wahl
It's actually not weird, because English/French/Swiss/Italian bikes, despite the vagaries of tube sizes and threading, all use the same "frame cup inside seat" dimension: 30.2 mm. So any headset that provides frame cups to fit that dimension, no matter what its top cup/nut threading or fork crown race dimension, will fit the frame (theoretically; in practice, as with most interference fits, there are sometimes "adjustments" such as peening the fork crown race seat that have to be made).
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/cribsheet-headsets.html
The OP mentioned that the fork was English threaded, yet the steerer tube measures 25.0 mm. As Charles Wahl notes, the frame cup inside seat is pretty much universal.

I will share that if you are willing to live with a class B or C fit, you CAN run something other than a French metric headset on a French 25.0 steerer tube. My Allegro came to me with a Campagnolo 25.4 x 24 Italian threaded headset that a previous owner had fitted to the Nervor 25.0 x 1 steerer. It almost worked, though it was predictably a teensy bit loose, and he'd left out stuff like washers and a centerpull hanger to get something that needed 42 or so mm stack height to fit onto a steerer cut for a 33 mm-ish headset. I wound up replacing it with the bottom half of a generic Tange headset to fit the monkeyed-with fork crown set and the top half of a generic Motobecane headset that has about the same dimensions as a Stronglight P-3. It works much better, and I was able to carefully thread the French bits back on and have had no issues with it. Measuring stuff with good calipers makes life a lot easier.

All of that said - I think you have some sort of French bike with a Swiss threaded bottom bracket that someone has force-fitted with an English headset. Juvela mentioned Prugnat 62/S lugs with a Vagner PC fork crown and a BB shell by Gargatte (Raccords Gargatte Freres, to which I would add that the dropouts look to me like Nervex stamped units just like the ones on a zillion entry and mid-line French bikes, including this Liberia. All of this is very French. Bertin has been mentioned - did they ever use Swiss threads? I bet other makers used similar seatstay top treatments. Is that swaged and crimped?
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