scozim 

Figured I'd better post here now that I'm finally almost wrapped up with this project.

Last March or April the local bike shop owner emailed me and said he had "some old road bike stuff" behind his shop and I was welcome to it. I went by first thing in the morning and amid the three bike frames was what the GitaneUSA folks have determined was a Gitane from the late 1960's. It's obviously a low end bike but is very solid.

I've been contemplating what to do with it for awhile. Last summer I picked up a 1984 Trek Mixte in great shape. I bought it because the components were all Simplex and the wheelset Weinmann rims with Helicomatic hubs (I know they're the bane for some people). I sold the frame and the parts were essentially free. My plan was to use some of those Simplex parts and the wheelset on the bike. As you'll see the best made plans are often turned upside down, especially with vintage French bikes.

Here's what I picked up in the alley:



The paint has a lot of character - real rough. But it's got the original decals so I wanted to leave it alone. I've yet to find a good match for the blue for touch up paint.

The Mafac brakes were in pretty bad shape so I decided not to use them. I had some Weinmann and Dia Compe center pulls and went with the Dia Compe because they looked the best. That is until I found out they didn't have enough reach on the front - even for the 27" wheels. Time to switch gears. Fortunately, I had a set of Weinmann 730 side pull calipers that worked perfectly, so on they went.

Next were the shifters and front derailleur. Went to run the cable and the ends were too big for the Simplex shift levers. Crap. On went a pair of Suntour power ratchet downtube shifters.

Since the shifters changed, that meant the rear derailleur would need to change (well, it didn't have to, but I wanted to make it Suntour also). I just picked up a Suntour V-GT Luxe long cage rear derailleur for $4 two weeks ago - so on it went. For now I decided to stay with the Simplex SJA102 front derailleur.

The Nervar 52-36 cottered cranks and Lyotard pedals were really rusty and took some elbow grease to clean up. Unfortunately, I'm missing one of the Lyotard dust caps (as seen in the photo). The Pivo stem polished up ok. I tried to go with some alloy handlebars and struck out so stuck with some steel ones I had. Finally, I had to purchase an aluminum Kalloy 25.4 seatpost.

Overall, the bike turned out great. It's a Frankenbike, but I don't really care.

I still need to install the chain and fine tune it - but it's essentially done. The frame is 60 cm and too tall, so I won't be riding it much. My wife asked what I'm going to do with it. I told her I didn't know. She said it's a waste to have it laying around and not using it. My response was there aren't a lot of 40+ yo bikes in this town, especially French one, so I'm not going to get ride of it.

Costs include $4 for the Suntour rear derailleur, $3 for the Vetta saddle, $8 for the seat post and Cane Creek brake hoods and $9 for the Bike Ribbon bar tape.

Ok - enough of the long wind - here's the photos:

devinfan

Beautiful job! To me this really is the perfect beater - something that you wouldn't mind locking up, but that's cool and that you'd also enjoy riding. It looks great.

SteveSGP

I love it! Old bikes should have some character.

Low end or not that's one classy looking bike.

robtown

Nice beater. Those Suntour shifters work well. I particularly like the lightweight transparent chain - one size fits all!