gitane?
 

I am currently sanding down for repainting a gitane 600 (so says the decal) bb serial is C 707 79, sticker on the back of seat tube says "Gitane Pacific 11786"

Frame is 52cm, might be a touch tight for me, but might not. I'm considering this as one of the possible frames for the triathlon in april (other consideration is my Lotus 2000r, but it has a minuscule downtube dent 5mm diameter, about 1mm deep), or the fuji "special road racer", but I can't figure out anything about that one either.

I'll have before and after shots later, either way.

The intarwebs aren't giving me much about this particular frame, though...

go to Gitaneusa.com, that's where I found info about mine. They have a bunch of old catalogues you can look through. I love my Gitane, I ride it everywhere as my commuter.

nice catalogues. Now i wants a hamster and a hermine. Real kids bikes?!?!?!? I thought they didn't even exist.

I recently bought a Gitane 600. Nice mid 70's sport tourer with decent quality components. Frame still made in France during that era. Pretty sure it's chrome moly. You're right, there's not much info in the web. Here's the most I could come up with.

http://www.gitaneusa.com/images/catalog/1976_pg5.jpg

Oops...

wrote4luck beat me to it.

Here's my 600.

The braze ons and lugs match, but I'm missing those beautiful forks. Oh, well. Good, it's a decent frame to build on :)

I was guessing based on the gitaneusa catalogues that it would be a 1969 (looking at the model progressions), but mid 70's fits the general look.

Original color is candy apple red. I'll probably paint it (trust me, it has to be painted. It's krylon leftover camo right now) ... white and sky blue, or copper flake, or something.

Mine is dark blue with a chrome fork. I also had to sand and repaint mine, it came out very well. I'm thinking about getting some reproduction decals made for it.

if I can math the simple font, I might just have "gitane 600" printed in 24 to 32 pt and slap it on the downtube and lieave it at that.

I think I'm building this out as a 5 or 6 speed friction racer. I've got the bars for it, have a sweet fork that will work. I've got some nice enough BBs, and vintage suntour RDs of many types (the V gx I just redid might go on, but there's this really elegant ancient Shimano Tourney GS that might end up on there) but I lack cranks and wheels right now. Teh best I can put together right now is some cassette 700c thing with a Forte hub that needs to be repacked laced to an forte empressa rim, and a fairly generic araya front with a basic hub.. I don't know anything about cassettes at all, though.