WHAT!

Always happy to be the Gitane grouch!

In 1976 Gitane switched from swagged seat stays back to brazed on "willow leaf" seat stay caps on their top models: Tour de France, Champion de Monde and Olympic. The frames were all Reynolds 531 and most had Huret honeycomb rear dropouts. Very few of those bikes were imported into the US.





Gitane used the Huret honeycomb or spiderweb dropouts on their performance models from 1974 through 1976. One advantage, almost any derailleur could be mounted on them: Huret, Simplex, or universal Campy style. There was also a rare chain hanger attachment that fit over the back of the dropout.

The 1976 TdF and CdM used the same frame, the only difference was in the the level of components. They both came with Stronglight P3 headsets with a 33mm stack height and enough threads on the steerer for a MAFAC front cable hanger. (TdFs came with a mishmash of components: Simplex derailleurs, Huret derailleurs, Stronglight cranks, Sugino cranks and so on)

The Olympic model came with Campy components and a Campy headset with a 41mm stack height so they had a steerer that was at least 8mm-10mm longer. The Olympic came with MAFAC 2000 brakes while the Super Olympic had Campy brakes. Also some Olympic bikes came with Campy dropouts.

[MENTION=384627]MiloFrance[/MENTION] looks like your bike has a P3 headset which would make it a TdF or CdM.

A number of years ago we did a survey of Gitane serial numbers on the GitaneUSA.com forum. After about 2 years we determined that there was NO LOGIC to the numbers stamped into Gitane frames from that era.

Here's a 1976 Olympic BB from Germany. Notice the numbers look similar to MiloFrance's bike.



My 1974 TdF:



My 1974 CdM:



[MENTION=384627]MiloFrance[/MENTION] There is a good chance that your frame is made with lighter gage 0.9mm x 0.6mm Reynolds 531 main tubes rather than the standard 1mm x 0.7mm tubing. My 1974 CdM had the lighter tubes.

One way to tell, the 0.9mm x 0.6mm tubing takes a 26.6mm seatpost rather the standard 26.4mm.

Lastly you may find some of the top end Gitane frames from that era that still had swagged seat stays. Were they made in 1975 or did Gitane get lazy?

verktyg