a friend has asked for help, building up a roadish bike for her. She wants a sloped top tube, so I'm thinking Mixte is best. She also wants one that is not too heavy.

The Early Raleigh Gran Prix mixtes are plentiful, look nice, but are a bit hefty.

Cany any one suggest make/models to look out for that are a bit lighter? I'm guessing late 80's japanese frames would be a good place to start from... but specific samples

thanks!
Mark in Madison

The problems with mixte bikes is that they are a. about 2 lbs heavier than the equivalent "men's" model and b. they were usually lower level models. If she is not particular for a mixte, you might want to take a look at early 80s Miyata 310S (Stepthrough frame) which weights about 25-26 lbs, compared to 30 lbs for an similar age Miyata 210M mixte

I had a Fuji mixte come through my hands a while ago and it was surprisingly light. Look for an 80s Fuji mixte, such as a Royale.

If you can find one, Motobecane made a mixte frame from Reynold's 531 back in the 60's and 70's, also the Raliegh Super Course Mixte from the early 70's was made with 531 main tubes. I have been building up what is supposed to be a Grand Prix (I suspect it is a production overrun from the Super Course line) and think the weight is fine, but only plan to use it for a city bike. If you find a '77 Grand Prix that does not have a kickstand plate and has a serial # starting with "W" it is likely a leftover Super Course frame.
Other than that there are three new ones on the market to look at, Rivendell's Betty Foy @ 1K, Velo Orange coming out at around $700 and the Soma Buena Vista at about $500. They are all made from top grade tubing and should have a reasonable weight.
But the problem, as Ejuste mentioned, is that the Mixte design was meant to be stouter and stronger for carrying heavy loads for delivery in the old days, and touring after that. They will all be heavier than a diamond framed road bike with comparable materials.

Really? I've never heard this before.

My wife's commuter is an 80s Raleigh Marathon mixte, which takes 700c wheels and is relatively quite light. I've set it up as a 5-speed.



Neal

If you can find one, Kettler made an aluminum mixte in the late 70's. It was called the Kettler Alu-rad. I found this picture on the web:

_____
edit: on a whim I checked on ebay, and there is one on ebay right now. Ha!

My daughter's Lotus mixte is pretty darn light. I think it's a bit lighter than our Raleigh Supercourse.

Wow, your daughter is lucky, that's a very stylish mixte!
If price is no object, there were more than a few British builders (and Alex Singer in France, too) who made high-end mixtes of mainly 531. I've seen a Holdsworth and Bob Jackson in person, and pics of several others.

Austro Daimler made a few lightweight mixtes as well.

If you find a Vent Noir mixte you can sell the black Dura-Ace and send the kids to private school.

OY! The Kettler and the Lotus are lovely looking. I guess one has to just be lucky to see one pop out of the shadows.

1. Mixtes are hard to find, and higher quality mixtes are really hard to find. Unless you get really lucky, you will be looking a while, and need to cast a broad net (well past your local market).

I drove 210 miles round trip to pick up this 1984 Centurion Lemans 12 mixte frameset. It is one of the better mixtes out there.

One nice thing with starting with just a frameset is that you can greatly influence the overall weight with the components you choose for the build. In my case, the components were dictated by the Sanwa donor bike I had of similar vintage, along with a decent 700c wheelset.

thrifty bill

Like Noah Scape, I've never seen that either. Do you have a photo of your example?

-Kurt

It's a personal bit of deductive work. I ran across a '77 Grand Prix which I am rebuilding into a city bike/grocery getter. When I looked up the serial # WL6086 I found that W means worksop plant, L the fortnight it was built (Jul or Aug) and 6 being the year of manufacture. Now according to legend (and Sheldon Brown) the Worksop plant was dedicated to building only the high end frames with Reynolds 531 tubing. The Super Course was the only mixte frame Raleigh built with 531 tubing, and discontinued it after 1976. That plus the fact that my bike has no kickstand plate while the Grand Prix was always spec'd with one leads me to the suspicion that it was a leftover Super Course frame they decided to sell off the following year. I don't know if that's true, but nobody has been able to provide a better explanation for the serial #. At any rate it's fun the think I might have benefited in some small way from a corporate misjudgment. It also feels a lot like the old 531 Follis I rode during my college days.

Worksop built some of the plain-jane Grand Prix's too - in fact, my Raleigh serial number chart has a photo showing the BB of a 1980 Super Grand Prix, with a Worksop serial number.

Far as I know, the GP's weren't subjected to that kickstand plate until 1977. Case in point, the following pre-'73 example:


Example #1

...and this 1976 example, which has a proper chainstay bridge as well:


Example #2


What lugs does your example have?

-Kurt

Here's a couple photos, one of the bike as I found it and the work in progress. I would have to scrape some new paint off the BB to take a clear photo of the serial # but it is clearly WL6086.

You're the first to be able to provide any other facts, you are probably right if the serial # on yours follows the same pattern.

I picked up a Peugot mixte and it seems fairly light. Certainly lighter than the hi-ten frame sitting next to it so I'm wondering what's under the rattlecan paint jobber.

Back to the original poster's question...

I think that I remember Univega (and Shogun as well) making some triple butted CrMo framed mixte bikes in the 80s. If I am not way off, these guys would probably be as light as they get (other than older 531 bikes with 120mm spacing and Paramount Mixtes - which might not be a good value proposition)

Didn't mean to sidetrack the thread, I have seen several miyata mixte's from the 80's that looked nice also. I'm not sure if they had that nice triple butted cromo they are famous for.

The serial could equally apply to a Super Course or a Grand Prix from August 1976.

I'm still checking to see if there exists the slightest external difference between a Super Course mixte and a Grand Prix mixte.

-Kurt

From 1985 on the Miyata 100 model and up (110, 210) would have had triple-butted frames on the mixte versions. Probably the same applies to the other Japanese bikes at the time, after all they were raising the bar on each other. Centurion Lemans, Shogun 400 (at least), several different Fuji models, Panasonic...

You'd probably know better than anybody. I couldn't find any better explanation and it would make sense from a business standpoint to sell off any leftover frames the next year(like giving away some extra filling in the pastry). But to me it's no great deal, the bike rides great and makes a nice daily ride in the city regardless if the main tubes are spaghetti.

I sold an '86 Raleigh Olympian mixte frame a few weeks ago for $20. It was triple butted Raleigh 575 Cro-Mo tubing and reasonablly light.

There were no Paramount mixtes. They were stepthrough frames.