Spent a wild, crazy and dirty weekend with my Garin, and after all of the terrible things I said about her now we are in love. Where once I saw warts, now I see beauty marks. Wine was consumed, promises were made and incredibly heavy Solida cranks and BB were exchanged for French threaded Zeus and Dura Ace. Burned all of her old clothes and gave her new ones. Her bars were so pretty under the weird blue foam that I decided to leave them bare, also because I only had one roll of blue tape. I don't think her lugs are real (there doesn't seem to be any brazing material) but they are pretty enough and I am too polite to ask. Can't believe I had everything on hand to complete my Belle du Jour, but here she is in all her faded glory. Unknown age Garin Tour Olympique:

I'm glad to hear you two silly kids made out, umm, up !

I approve of your gear choice! Rock it baby !

LOL thanks! Gearing is 42:16 fixed. Plan to use it as my Winter trainer and I prefer a lower gear when it's -20 and windy outside. As usual it only took me a block to get used to riding fixed again - didn't realize how much I'd missed it!

Ditto!

Already riding the Rush with 46:17 but soon to pack it away for the winter and have been bringing the rescue Raleigh clubman style Fixed out for training and small group rides. Fenders ya know!

good to see her all together and road ready devinfan!

did you reuse the bardon swiss cupset she came with?

nice to see you put the brake bridge to good use.

Fenders are a great idea. Luckily the Garin has eyelets so in the next week or two I will set some up.

Thanks juvela! Yes the cups were fine, I just used a Zeus Competition French spindle and it fit perfectly.

She's been around the block a few times, no doubt. They can be much better when they've got some experience. I see she likes leather too. Interesting

We've decided not to bring up her past...

did you achieve a good chainline straightaway or did she require a spot o' fiddling?

wrt dating - iirc the folks in pantin stopped doing these semi-lugged/semi-lugless (pick your term!) frames somewhere right around 1970 but have never known an exact year. know they go back to at least the early sixties but do not know how far. other readers are sure to know more...

have always liked them, and considered them an honest product, with their silver undercoat finishes and have used a several to build complete cycles.

do you think the bicycle was commercially imported to the canadian market or was it perhaps brought in by a traveler?

afaik this badge was never imported to the u.s. another mb badge we did not get, afaik, is the dynamax.

you'll have to post another report after doing a bit in the saddle!

You're a fountain of information juvela. The chainline's not perfect. It will be when I flip the spindle around I just haven't done it yet. No knowledge of where the bike came from, I bought it from a very nice man who was using it as his daily commuter. I'd love to know more about the brand but the only examples online are higher end offerings from the 50's, which this is clearly not. The tubing decal made me think bike boom, but maybe I'm off. I had an idea Garin might be one of those brands that were resurrected just for the boom. English decal proudly declaring that it's built with 1020 tubes, forks and stays so that suggests to me it was made for export. Weighs 20.5 pounds as is. Love the ride - surprisingly agile considering the long wheelbase. Was smiling for the entire 40km test ride i took it on today. The only hiccup is that the BB is too low for clips and straps so they'll have to go.

wrt bottom bracket height -

frame would have been constructed for 27" wheel and would have come with 1 1/4" tyres so by running 700's you are lowering bb height by four mm, plus a few more for the smaller cross section tyres being used.

iirc the ex-works bb height would have been something between 10 5/8" and 10 3/4". so as machine presently configured would expect a height between roughly 10 1/4" and 10 1/2". one thing which might possibly assist you a bit would be to fit kickup tabs to pedals. just an idea...

the mikashima ones:

Here are pics of the headbadge and tubing decal, plus something I've never seen before: blue anodized under-carriage of a Brooks Pro. Would love to know the story behind that.

frame -

same frame also used to build cycles sold as motobecane, orly, astra, dynamax as well as a department store chain badge here in the u.s. there are likely other badges also which are not known to me.

saddle -

never saw one like this before. is heel plate marked with a date? my guess would be that blue lacquer is aftermarket, but only a guess.

sounds like you are having no end of fun with this project, as with the others you have shared with the forum previously! thank you for letting us in on it.

Thanks juvela, that makes sense. I've seen motobecanes with the same tubing badge. I am literally having no end of fun with this bike. I'm not joking when I say I've fallen in love with it. I think I'm going to narrow my collecting to low end French bikes because I'm having more fun with this $60 bike than I've had with some I've spent ten times as much on. I'm going to look for a date stamp on the Brooks as soon as the kids are asleep. The blue doesn't look like paint, it looks anodized, but I may be wrong.

saddle -

after posting occurred to me that colour resembled layout dye employed in metal working. some brooks pros get a two digit date stamp and others do not.

noticed inverted clip. did you do this because of worn/damaged splines?

frame -

one thing your frame lacks which every other example of these i have seen exhibits is the fork crown cap with the cutout letter m for motobecane. it is there regardless if bike badged as motobecane, astra, orly or dynamax. makes me wonder if your bicycle was built without it or if it was removed at some point. the frame's crown is a nervex pattern nr. 4. here is an example badged as astra wearing its winged m fork crown cap:



it is not quite visible in your photos but i would expect frame to wear a plate style chainstay bridge. each example i have seen has had it.

all this bike work and you are a dad too, congratulations!

I like Belle.

Now that you mention it the paint on top of the fork crown looks to be in better shape than the rest of the fork, so maybe it was removed! That's a pretty deep observation on your part. Not sure what you mean by plate style bridge, this one is a traditional round one. The saddle clip is the result of post midnight and red wine assembly after the rest of the house was sleeping!

Thanks non-fixie, hope you're having as much fun with your amazing finds!

+1 Maybe not Catherine Deneuve, but quite lovely in her own way. I like these purposeful riders that aren't fussy perfect.

She has no past, she's just seasoned.