Italian Universal brakes on a French bike? I don't believe I've ever seen that.

Time for digressions I guess; It does sound odd, but I had two Motobecane singles with Model 66 sidepulls (I took them out of the factory boxes when they arrived at the LBS a couple of years apart) and had a blue Moto tandem with Universal centerpull brakes on the mixte rear (supplementing a pair of those really long Mafac Canti's). Mostly led to believe that the ones on the tandem had been installed at the factory due to having nice Universal levers under OEM looking bar tape as well as matching hoods and cable housings. Normally one would expect anything but a Universal brand double pull tandem level on the left side for sure. But bought it, touched it, road it forever, and still sorry I sold it. I still have one of the original singles and only took its U-66 brakes off last year in a costmetic upgrade in prep to selling it off (it didn't sell).

Likewise, ever see one of the full Campy French racing bikes that was all French threaded except for the Italian bottom brackets. The frame tubes were double butted but smaller in diameter than Reynold 531. Weird. The LBS owner gave up trying to sell it after several years and gave it to a favored customer (why not me??), but he was so upset about it (and about losing the ~$400 he paid) that he often took it down off the hanger and pulled it apart cussing it all the way just to show folks the oddity.

Last night when I was shop cleaning, I found my long misplaced but very bizzare, fully chromed, Gitane frame that I have had since '74-ish that defies design logic. I'll post a pix soon to earn it another series of w-t-h-o's

/K

The French used metric-sized tubing. It's lightly smaller than standard size tubing. It is weird, The French did (do) a lot of weird things. I'll bet that French frame actually had French bottom bracket threads. They're wrong way, like Italian, but the diameter is smaller.

Are you going to post a picture of a Gitane travel bike with a short wheelbase and very odd stem?