A word of advice, check to see if your cranks are Stronglight brand. They likely are, if this is a high-end bike. If they are, then be very careful to use the right tool to remove the cranks. Stronglight used a unique 23.35 mm thread for the extractor, so use only a Stronglight remover, or one made to fit such as a Stein or Var.

Many folks have ended up stripping out the threads on the cranks by using a 23.0 mm remover, which is the size for TA brand cranks. Even bike shop personnel often don't know the difference, especially now that the cranks have been obsolete for nearly 50 years.

If your bike is a cheaper one, it might have cottered steel cranks. Working on cottered cranks is a bit of a lost art. No one who works in most bike shops knows how to do it right, though some will say they do and they aren't lying, they just don't know what they don't know. Those steel cranks are really heavy too, with not much good to say about them, so maybe just upgrade them to aluminum cotterless cranks. There are a few of us here that can give you advice if you want to stick with the cottered cranks though, for whatever reason. Sentimental attachment? A 1950s or older bike with cottered cranks should be kept original, but by '73 only cheap bikes had them, and those don't need to be kept original IMHO. If I sound like a bike snob, it's probably because I am.

Your pedals are probably 14 mm thread, which is not interchangeable with modern pedals that all have a 9/16" thread. So hang on to the original pedals. French cranks can be tapped to 9/16" though, if you want to upgrade the pedals. You just can't go back to 14 mm after the cranks have been tapped.

Your handlebar stem is nominal 22.0 mm ("French" size), not interchangeable with English/Italian/Japanese stems that are usually 7/8" (22.2 mm). Yes 0.2 of a millimeter makes a difference! 7/8" stems can be reduced in size to fit a French steerer.

Your hub has a thread-on freewheel, and it is metric threaded too. If you put an English-thread freewheel on there, it can seem to fit, but then you'll strip the threads on the hub on the next steep hill, ruining it. It's possible to find French-threaded freewheels, but not new, you'd be looking at used stuff from another C&V person or ebay. (Old stuff that was never used is called NOS for "new old stock", but NOS metric freewheels are extremely rare.) You can also replace the rear wheel with one with English threads, or one with a cassette freehub, the more modern type. The latter will probably require bending the rear triangle out wider, because most freehubs are wider than the old 5-speed standard on your frame. Ask for advice here before attempting to widen the spacing, most people do it wrong if not taught the right way.

Your bottom bracket bearings (that the crank spindle turns in) and the headset (that the fork steerer turns in) are also metric threaded, not interchangeable with English/Italian/ISO/JIS threads. French-threaded parts are still available if you need them, both new and NOS.

Working on an old French bike is more challenging than working on most other old bikes, for the reasons I've listed and a couple more. They can be really nice-riding bikes though, and a lot of us love them and seek them out. Should you choose to sell it, you'll likely find a buyer here, especially if it's one of the top-of-the-line models. Do make a note of the forum rules for selling bikes though, you can't list it until your membership is upgraded, and then only in the For Sale forum.

Have fun, and welcome to the forum.

Mark B