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Thanks for the update and the shell height measurement. 290mm works out to ~11 3/8" which is on the high side, or high-ish, however one wishes to think of it...

As usual, the USS Enterprise was spot on!

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Cool frame. Is the tubing metric or imperial?

Seat tube looks pretty slack to me. The steeper the HTA the lower the mechanical trail for a given fork offset and tire size. That said I don't see what implies that this bike was intended to have low trail or to otherwise be a randonneuring frame specifically.

It seems that the HTA was slack, TTs long and stems so short on older randonneuring frames was more a function of small riders on small frames (toe overlap) than anything else.

Fair points, Colonel. My guess is that the seller hit upon the randonneur designation to draw more views. Nothing about it ever screamed "rando" to me. The tube lengths interest me the most, to be quite honest. As for your first question, I'm not going to speculate until I have a chance to actually do some measurements. (OK, I'll guess...probably metric.)

I can't take any credit. The CX idea was proposed by someone else on CR. I only thought of it after looking closer. Way cool. Some nice Carrés appearing lately.

The late Bernard Carrés (ca 1980) had concave seatstay ends like this one:

While I play around with different options on the build I'll keep this thread alive with an update now and then. This is the latest. (By the way, every time I show a bike on this stand I get a warning about crimped tubes. I've got this clamp adjusted so that it is loose enough, and with enough play, that I normally have a chamois wrapped between the top tube and the clamp. All is good.)



I’ve been torn over staying true to the roots and going with a very French drive train vs. using period Campagnolo (because the Campy cable and housing guides that were on the frame lead me to believe that’s how the bike might have originally been built up.) So I dug through my parts bins and began to layout French stuff in one pile on the floor, and Campy stuff in another. As I pushed aside different Baggies of mechs, I realized I’d forgotten all about a Zeus kit I’ve been saving for.. well, for something.

Seems like a good time to put them to use.





I made one blunder right off the bat. I wanted to check to see if the spindle was long enough for a nice Stronglight crankset I have on hand (it wasn't.) Only after starting to snug things down did I recall that I loaned out my Stronglight and my TA pullers quite some time ago, and that I'd never gotten them back again (nor ever gotten an email response from the loan-ee.) That makes the second time in six months I've forgotten about this situation, and the second time I've had to rely on someone else to fix my goof. So a big shout out to Mark Pace at Pace Bicycle Haven in Independence, Missouri for his patience! Right now I've got a Japanese crank on there that fits, until I figure out exactly what I want to use for real.





This all French wheel set, with Maillard hubs and skewers, Atom FW, and Frenchie-French rims is quite a bit heavier than I'd like. I may switch them out with a lighter set with the same Maillard hubs and Nisi rims. That particular set currently has an Atom corn cob and I'm actually considering leaving it in place. Y'know...up until sanity kicks back in.

I managed to fit 32 Paselas without a hitch. I have yet to decide if wider tires look "right" on this bike, but personally I don't care for the ride of anything narrower than 28.

I'm still digging around for a 26.2 seat pin that I know I have. It's eluded me so far, which just means that my efforts to sell off/trade off parts these past few years have not been as successful as I (translation: my wife) had hoped.

That's all for now. More to come later.

I think the Zeus group is a good selection.

My only problem, which I have noticed, is with the shape of the shifter strap. That pointy shape will dig into the stop or crumple up and ride over it.

Looking forward to the progress.

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Love that CONI cover poster.


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The cantilever brakes were used not only on CX bikes but also on ultralight time trial machines like this one made for Bernard Guyot in 1971:



During the 1971 TdF, Bernard Guyot was a teammate of the two famous Luciens, Aimar and Van Impe.

I can't resist showing this nice pic:


Source: Petite reine: Bernard Guyot

I LOVE that photo! Thanks so much for sharing it!

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Thanks so much for these great pictures Filochard!

Love that Citroen H van.

Here is one used as photo vehicle from the Tour of nineteen seventy-three:

Your chance to own a part of 1973 Tour de France history - Cycling Weekly

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[MENTION=333224]juvela[/MENTION], that TUB Citroen, as it was casually called in France, was very versatile:

https://quatrecylindres.files.wordpr...pg?w=768&h=500

Thanks very much Filochard, great picture!

One figures prominently in the 1966 feature film "After The Fox" starring Peter Sellers:

After the Fox (1966) - Plot Summary - IMDb

His character pretends to be an auteur film director and the H van is the vehicle of the "film crew."

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Hello again everyone!

I'm reviving this discussion because I just came across a photo of Bernard Guyot taken in 1968 on his Sauvage-Lejeune-liveried bicycle, where you can see his initials engraved on the seatstay caps, the signature of a frame built by Bernard Carré for professionals of the time, such as Jan Janssen from the same team.




Jan Janssen, 1965

Wow, it's been almost nine years since I last responded to this thread I started. It was interesting to go back and re-read some of the early speculation, as well as the relevant information and photos that were shared along the way. In the beginning I tried several iterations with this frame. I eventually wound up building it entirely with French components (other than the Brooks Pro) - SLJ mechs, Stronglight crank, etc. It's been that way for several years now and I really don't anticipate further updates or mods, so here is my Carré for posterity:

Could have been used for Randonnée, but really just a sport touring bike, as most were in the early 70s. To take wider tires and mudguards. Nothing specific about it to call it a Randonneur. Should be a nice all-around bike.

Here's a Carre bike I got a few years ago that was quite odd. The head angle was 70.5 and it only had 38mm of fork offset, producing a whopping 80mm of trail. I'm sure it was made this way, but I can't figure out why. All I can guess is, he wanted to give it some toe clearance, and it had a 54 cm top tube, but he didn't bother to pair it with the right fork. Steering was very heavy and I could not ride it down the road no hands. Too much "wheel flop". I added 17mm of offset to the fork, which shortened it, steepened the head angle, and also gave the top tube a slight slope, but now it has trail of 58-59 and handles perfectly, hands on or off the bars. I'm afraid I lost a bit of respect for this otherwise highly regarded builder, to have turned out a bike with such impossible front end geometry. Last pics show it after the modification.

P. JOZ by B. CARRE | Flickr

La grande dame est belle!

Seriously, that's a really pretty bike.

Did you ever figure out what the original bike was all about?

Where / how / what for do you ride it, and how do she do on those rides?

Basically, just... more.

--Shannon

Thanks for posting those pics. I have lots of pics of Jan Janssen but not that one. I do have a bike nearly identical to his though! No indication that it was made by Bernard Carre though.



Bob Freeman

The one thing that says not CX to me is the indent in the outside of the R chainstay is in the wrong place. It seems to be placed for a small chainring, like a touring bike.

When a CX bike had chain guards on both sides of the ring (though not all did of course), the indent had to clear the inner chain guard, which is bigger than the chainring. Needing a chainstay indent much further from the BB end.

Well, with fender eyes, make that two things.

The other unusual feature of this chainstay is that it corresponds to a standard domed and slotted version offered by Reynolds for an additional fee.
Why didn't B. Carré use his traditional finish, which is present here on the seatstay?

Along with the missing cable guide eyelet at the bottom of the seatstay, this might indicate that the frame has undergone modifications.

@ShannonM, the short answer is nope. I never figured out what sort of bike this was intended to be, and as I've said before speculation runs rampant. Built her up in a way that suited my tastes and that I felt respected the heritage. It's fun to ride, and as I slowly passed along the vast majority of my collection over the years I've held on to this one. The gearing is a little tall for hills these days, but heck, that's just a reminder of what gearing used to be like in the olden days when I was a teenager.

The use of a domed end is likely building to a price point. I have a BC frame which has domed ends on all but the sea stay. IME, the cable guide on the seat stay was more a Lejeune feature rather than a BC branded feature. But as always, there are exceptions. I have a couple of Lejeune frames that have no eyelet and there is no evidence of them having one at all. I do not recall seeing a BC branded frame with an eyelet.