jenzopr

Dear cyclers,

I'm new to this forum because I wanted to share a bike with you that I tried to identify for some time now.
Here are some pictures:

(see attached)

The frame has the serial number 173814 under the bottom bracket.
The main label (Francis) pointed me to a cycle shop in Freiburg (Germany) and it's owner Francisco Garcia. He seems to be from Portugal or Spain but unfortunately I wasn't able to get into touch with him. I also don't know how common a frame-building cycle shop-owner is, or maybe he built it in former times.
The sticker on the seat tube is quite damaged and I could not identify it. Parts of it say PRÄZS and quality. Maybe anyone has seen it before.

It would be nice to hear your ideas and maybe gain some more knowledge about the bike!

Have a great day!
Jens

non-fixie 

Welcome, Jens! That's a good-looking bike you've got there. I don't recognize it, but it looks like a well-made mid-level bike to me at first sight. Can you tell us the seat post diameter? That should give us an indication of the tubing that was used.

unworthy1

stay caps have a certain "Austrian" feel to them, and that could be a "Thun" BB unit, the dropout has a slight "bump" that usually means GPM (Gipiemme). That's all the help I can offer, seems like a mid-grade frame.

MauriceMoss

The sticker indicates the tubing, in this case made by a company called Mesu. The rest of the words on that decal would be "PRÄZIS" and "HT-Quality." Presumably HT here would indicate high-tensile steel.

This is what the sticker would have looked like:






Now, who actually manufactured that frame, I'm not sure.

The few bikes I've run across that were made with this tubing (and had some details similar to the bike posted here) were labeled Nardelli and one labeled Fagenberg (Danish).

juvela

Pillar diameter would seem to be moot since it is wearing a shim -



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unworthy1

interesting and thanks yet again to Mr. Moss for research and pix: it's a German tubing manufacturer from Sundern, near to Dortmund, and not near any brand of bicycle maker that I'm familiar with, never heard of a "Francis" from Germany or Scandinavia...or anywhere else. But clearly it's some place that bought their tubing from Sundern.

T-Mar

FWIW, the crimped stay stops are reminiscent of what Puch was doing on contract and lower end models circa 1980 and though a different style, the practice extends back to their boom era offerings for Sears.

jenzopr

Wow! Thanks a lot for your reply, guys! Its nice to know that you estimate the frame as mid-level. I will provide you with the diameters of the pillar and seat post as soon as I can.

This is awsome! Special thanks to you - I wrote an email to Mesu in order to gain some knowledge when and to which frame builder they sold steel and which steel it was. Maybe they disclose some of their history or someone in the company remembers (might be >20 years ago).

I guess that Mr. Garcia rebranded the frame for his bike shop. Maybe it was an exhibit..

I'll keep you posted and thanks again!

jenzopr

Hi Guys!

Here are my updates:

The seat post has a diameter of 31.7mm, while the seat pillar has 27.2mm. The top tube has a diameter of 28.6mm.

I also got an interesting response from Mr. Brumberg, the owner of MESU. He took over the company from his parents in 1972 but does not remember the logo. He knows that they changed it at some time, but has to look into their archive when he's back from holidays.

Furthermore, he told me that they sold exactly the posts in diameters my bike has, i.e. 28.6 and 31.7 to nearly all frame builders in Germany and Netherlands at that time. Their most prominent customer he remembered was Enik (de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enik_(Fahrradhersteller)), who supported the Nordrhein-westphalia Racing Team. From old newspaper articles I know that Enik started building racing bikes around 1978 - a time that would not fit to the MESU decal, which is presumably older than 1970 (according to Mr. Brumberg).
Unfortunately, Enik went bankrupt in 2007 and got sold out. In 2016 the trade mark Enik was bought again.

I then looked for catalogues of Enik and found one (fotos.rennrad-news.de/s/14540). The scans are from 1983 to 1986 and show only two models with a frame made from "precision special light tubes", all others are Reynold 531 or Columbus tubes (models are Stelvio and Amateur 2S (before 1984)).

All in all, thats quite a lot to look up and research. I will definitely try to get in touch with someone from (former) Enik.

Let me know what you think or if you have further suggestions!