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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Rochester, NY
Posts: 18,052
Bikes: Stewart S&S coupled sport tourer, Stewart Sunday light, Stewart Commuting, Stewart Touring, Co Motion Tandem, Stewart 3-Spd, Stewart Track, Fuji Finest, Mongoose Tomac ATB, GT Bravado ATB, JCP Folder, Stewart 650B ATB
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Traditionally nutted front axles were often a smaller diameter then those of QR attachment. Atom made front hubs with the same shell but one or the other axle and nuts/QR. So it's possible that this bike had axle nuts on the front when new. This would have been quite common in the 1960s and 1970s. As are the cottered crankset and the chrome Rigida rims common spec. I suspect that this bike is more likely a mid 1970s model. There were two bike booms in that decade and we saw a lot of importing from Europe then. They struggled to keep up with demand (and this is when the start of the Asian wave began) and often each shipment of a specific model would vary in spec from what we had been told. So QR models might have a nutted wheel, the freewheel range got changed frequently, saddles substituted, Simplex instead of Huret, that kind of spec drift as needed to get the bike out the factory door.
Front drop outs can be enlargened to fit QR axle diameters. Frames and forks can be reset for drop out width (of course all this should be done by someone who knows what they are doing). It's when the upgrading wants get into the threaded stuff (BB, headset, pedals) or the sliding fit stuff (seat post, stem, bars) that the French aspects will become a limitation. Andy
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AndrewRStewart