jolly_codger

Ran across this on the auction site that shall not be named. Never seen a split seat tube before and I am guessing that front mech is a French braze-on. Other than uniqueness, is there any reason for the fork-seat tube?

Rooney 

Shorter chainstays, tighter wheelbase. It provides clearance for the tire. Very "whippy."

LesterOfPuppets

Wow, I'm surprised those are whippy, what with that BB shell bracing and the short chainstays.

daka

Wow! A Huret Jubilee that won't break its clamp at the hinge. Interesting frame design too. I wonder if it changes the riding characteristics much?

TenGrainBread 

Mecacycle Turbo, mid 80s.
Small firm started late 70s in St. Etienne by an experienced industry guy. Ceased operations ~1990. High-end fillet brazed frames made from Vitus and sometimes Columbus or Reynolds. Turbo was the split tube model with special flat mount braze-on for FD. A few French derailleur manufacturers made FDs for this mount.
Chrono was the traditional model but custom only, although sometimes had crimped or profiled seat tubes to allow for shorter chainstays. Firm was also well-known for interesting mountain bike designs with wild paint jobs.

​​​​​​Notice the frame in your photo has no seat binder braze-on. Quill seatposts were an option for all models if you wanted to be aero.

abdon 

I have seen (in pictures, not in person) more elegant designs for a split seat tube. The Saxon Split Tube from the 1930's were sexy AF

oneclick 

Rigi did this, and Gian Robert made their front mech.
That Huret part looks a bit hand-made.

stainless steel RIGI Shimano Dura-ace and 600 AX parts

1989Pre 

I like what they did with the tapers on the tubes and stays. That frame-set is definitely a "find".

gearbasher

I rode with a guy who had a frame like that. He owned a local bike shop. The guy moved away years ago and I can't recall the frame maker.

The Golden Boy 

What auction site?!??

Voldemort has an auction site?

DealDash?

Mecum?

Bonham’s?

Barneby’s?

PropertyRoom.com?

Municibid?




Why do people have a problem saying eBay?

It’s not like anyone has problems saying Coca Cola or Microsoft or Colnago or Campagnolo or Schwinn or Raleigh or Xerox or Kleenex or any myriad of companies (even companies with complete monopolies), but for some reason avoid saying eBay?

Trakhak

Or else say "Fleabay," "Evilbay," etc.

Don't have my copy of Hammett's novel Red Harvest at hand, so, from memory, the opening lines:

"I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-headed mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte, Montana. He also called his shirt a shoit. I assumed that Poisonville was the kind of meaningless humor that made thieves call the dictionary a Richardsnary."

repechage

I recall Norris Lockley acquired one in a smaller size.
thinking of which, his family must be having a heck of a time sorting out the frames he collected.
His son made an appearance here then silence.

repechage

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cyclec...57603759975763

abdon 

Is not a problem but a dislike to such degree that they don't want to even mention their name. I'm a fan of calling them fleabay myself

TenGrainBread 

Other mfgrs like Peugeot had bikes with similar "direct mount" FD braze-ons, so FDs with the correct mount are easier to find than you think. I have a nice Simplex one in my stash right now and see a couple on ebay at the moment.

repechage

The lateral position of the mount of the front mech is pretty unique, there might be similar “style” but the adjustments will be whacked.

TenGrainBread 

Are you sure? I have this NOS Simplex meant for a Peugeot with direct mount and it looks to be an identical mounting position to the Huret on the Mecacycle pictured above.

Granted I've never tried it on a Mecacycle.

repechage

consider this, the presented frame has a special machined body-
the Simplex you cite is designed to mount to a tube that is 14mm off centerline.
‘the mecacycle twin tubes are way beyond 14mm from CL, more like 28-30mm. That is a big difference.

Chombi1 

I've been looking for a Mecacycle Turbo frameset for many years now.and found quite a few of them for sale.
Unfortunately, the ones I found were just too big. I also noticed that some of them were being sold unpainted, seemingly from the factory (not stripped). I suspect the maker sold the frames, unfinished as an option. Many of them are sold painted too, but without branding graphics.
I've only seen the Huret FD on the Mecacycle Turbos, but never the Simplex one.
Even though the FD brazed on mount is considered a French standard. The derailleurs made for such did not really follow any dimensional standards. Which meant that the slotted tang on the FD can be located differently on the FD, from one manufacturer to the other. That's what I found out that the Mavic version of the FD does not really work on my Peugeot PSV, because that tang is clocked different from the original Simplex FD that was on the bike. The slot on the Mavic FD is also different height-wise, so the FD ends up a bit too far from the big chainring teeth at it's lowest position. I suspect similar differences might exist between the Huret and Simplex FDs. So it 8s best to find a frameset with the Huret FD as I think they will be quite hard to find.
After searching so long, I kinda lost interest on the Mecacycle as I don't really like lugless construction on bikes. Still a cool bike, but not as cool for me as if it had lugs.

TenGrainBread 

That's true, and and the twin tube is a smaller diameter than the average metric seat tube, meaning the mount's radius will be slightly off as well.

repechage

like BB standards, there are no standards.

The Golden Boy 

But to peruse it, to buy stuff off it, to use it to determine pricing, to sell stuff on it... you can't dislike it *that* much.

abdon 

Oh, I loath them. I was using fleabay from the early days and experienced all their ****** decisions throughout the years. They were a great online auction house that wanted to be Amazon and in the process made selling in their platform not worth it. When they tried to force sellers to accept 60 days return policies over Christmas, when they jacked up their fees, when they started giving me performance reviews as if I was their employee, when 90% of sellers were drop shippers from overseas, when they started screwing up sellers on behalf of scamming buyers, and when they dropped PayPal and demanded I have them my account number, just to name a few.

I would rather throw something away than try to sell it on fleabay.

The Golden Boy 

I don't disagree too much. They've made a lot of bad changes; I've never been a big seller, but the changes have resulted in a lot fewer sellers with the things I want. Consequently, I rarely browse eBay like I used to, and regret not buying the stuff I wanted when it was readily available.

However, even when it was "a great online auction house" it's always been somewhat common to refer to it as "the auction site" or some other coy way of not saying eBay.