What to do
 

When life hands you French?

I was going through old wheelsets, disassembling them and cleaning them for future owners, when I discovered this:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-E...2/P1030566.JPG
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-R...2/P1030568.JPG

What in the world does someone do with 1978 32h Tipo hubs in French threading?

ebay.fr !

It didn't hand you French. That's Italian. The F stands for "filo" or whatever the Italian word is for "thread(ing)".

Well, that was a brain fart.

I don't know that I ever really looked at the threading on a hub. I know there were different types but never really gave it a though.

Corpulence is first
Reticence is next
I think flatulence is right in there....

"What a drag it is, getting old...."

Well there's French and ISO/English,...but I don't know if there's Italian as I avoid that threading as much as I can as they just needlessly complicate things with many Italian bikes at the BB area.

I believe there is English, Italian and French. Like headsets, the English and Italian are close enough to interchange, but you wouldn't want to be changing them back and forth. French is just French. Honestly, in 40 years of messing with old bikes I've only run into one French freewheel.

I got confused, because a French BB is 35X1, Italian is 36X24. I saw 35 and immediately went 'oh crap'.

I'm pretty sure this hube should take a stanard English freewheel. You could try gently threading a english freewheel or lock ring from BB on there to be sure.

Old Fat Guy would have never made that mistake.

I sure would have: I'm used to seeing "35" and concluding "French" or "Swiss", likewise when I see "1.37" it's BSC and "36" it's Italian. But I'm used to seeing all those on BB units, not hubs.
Campy's attempt to clarify the bizarre mix of metric and inch (that's a given with Italian threads) just muddies the waters more, until you learn their "system": Italy is not the place of origin, it's the thread type; "F" doesn't stand for "France" or "French", it's the abbreviation for "thread" but not in English, in l'Italiano...perfect!

He is probably smarter than me. I saw 35 and thought my work was in vain.

Are they 120mm? I might buy them from you.

Is he back among us?

Haha. I've got 3 or 4. Don't know where they came from, though.

Rules:
English and Italian are interchangeable but when you put English on Italian, the hub threads are now English. :D
English and Italian will thread on to French hubs. Everything will seem fine until after a few miles. Then, the hub will most likely strip.
French will thread on to English and Italian but only if you force it. Get my drift?

Refer to my last post.

Save them for an eBay bidding tournament. These hubs may be the only "Italian" thing left for some guy to acquire to complete his build. Look at completed listings for Italian vs English thread Super Record headsets, for instance.

Do the right thing and pass them along. You'll make a few bucks in the process. :D

125.5, but I could remove some spacers and they'd be 120 ;)