I've been looking for an old road bike to build up as an ssfg for a while now. Recently I picked up an extremely rusted 1977 Gitane Gypsy Sport. I forgot to take a "before picture" but you can get some idea from these shots of the frame and the parts I took off of it.





With a little bit of rust remover and a whole lot of elbow grease (not to mention Park PPL-1), I was able to reuse the brakes, stem, handlebar, bottom bracket, headset, seat post, chainring and crankset. The stem is badly seized, but it's about the right height for me, so I overhauled the headset with the stem on there, and I'm just going to live with that. The bottom bracket is French threaded, so I'm more or less stuck with that too, but with $1.75 worth of ball bearings and a few squirts of grease, it's surprisingly smooth.

The crank is a Sun Tour with the 53-tooth chainring attached (I plan to replace that eventually). I picked up a pair of Tektro 200A brake levers, and some Planet Bike bar tape. For now, I'm using a pair of Alex wheels with Deore/Tiagra hubs that came with my Kona Jake. I had Crank Brothers Smarty pedals, an 8-speed chain, some brake pads and a saddle lying around. Until I get a proper set of fixed gear wheels, I'm using a Forte singlespeed conversion kit.

So, here's what it looks like as of today: