Does anyone know if a mid-80s Gitane Gran Tour touring frame would have an English or French bottom bracket?

Are there any rules of thumb to make an educated guess whether an older French frame has a French BB?

Are there any workarounds so that one could use a modern english threaded, non-square taper BB (i.e. octalink, hollowgram, ISIS, etc. etc.) in a French BB shell?

Thanks.

I'm not sure but I think the Gran Tour was around in the US in 1983 and 1984 - not sure about later years. My two 1984 Gitane's are english threaded. Are there any numbers on the cups of the bb showing the threading?

It's looking to me like it's an 84 based on some photos of others I've found on line.

Now I'm wondering about other technical "issues" I might get into with this frame like seat post diameter, head tube threading, etc.

Check out gitaneusa.com and register for the forums over there. There's a couple of members who have Gran Tour's and probably can provide some good info.

there english

I would imagine it would be english threaded being a Gitane. I think it was Peugeot that waited the longest to start using English threads. Gitane and Motobecane adopted it earlier on i think.

i have a 84 its got english