It's a US model 1971-72 Tour de France with Simplex Ref 881 dropouts sans derailleur hanger. During the Bike Boom Fad of the early 70's the demand for "10 Speed Racing Bikes" was so high that European component manufacturers were hard pressed to meet the demands. Gitane used as many as 5 different types of dropouts on the US Tour de France models including, rarely Campy dropouts (but that's another story).



The US model TdFs were "all" Reynolds 531 tubing except for the steerer, head tube, brake bridge and chain stay bridge. The forks and rear stays had chrome plated socks.

Only the 3 main tubes on the European versions were Reynolds 531, the rest of the tubes and fork blade were seemed light weight carbon steel tubing. Only the forks were 1/2 chrome plated. The European models came with either Simplex or Huret proprietary dropouts depending on which brand of derailleurs the bike came with.

About the end of 1971 or so, Gitane switched from Nervex Pro fork crowns to Nervex Dubois crowns. They also stopped brazing on the brake cable stop bridge on the seat stays - a cost saving move.




Most US TdF and Super Corsa frames were made of 1mm x .7mm thickness main tubes which was used in most European production bikes from the late 60's to the early 70's. Metric size tubing took a 26.4mm diameter seatpost.

Occasionally some frames were made with lighter gauge .9mm x .6mm Reynolds 531 tubing. One indicator is those frames take a 26.6mm seatpost. Caveat: the seat tube could have been reamed out to fit a larger seatpost but you could see a step down inside the seat tube.

What are your plans for the frame? If your are going to paint and restore it, Cyclomondo in OZ makes the best Gitane foil decals. I helped him design them. Greg is on eBay at Cyclomondo or the web at cyclomondo.net...

It should be a nice riding bike.

verktyg