crank_addict

Bike boneyards are slim pickings these days but I recall the many lower end 3 arm cranks often used on French and Italian / also mixte bikes. Worthy for the chainrings but no one wanted the cottered cranks.

63rickert

When looking for rings that are scarce, or relatively scarce, look also at complete cranks. It will happen you can find a complete crank for same price as single ring. And it will happen you can get a complete bike for not much more than single ring.

Try the main French parts vendors - briko-bike, fabuluzvintage, b.cyclozag. They all have vastly more in storage than what you see listed on their ebay pages or websites. Just as an example if you go to the briko-bike.com site there is a little video tour of the display room of the warehouse and it can be seen that his detailed listings are perhaps 1% of inventory. And all that shows in the video is NOS and the cleanest freshest used parts. Out back there are a lot more parts.

If you will only have your French parts from a native English speaker you can always talk to Andy at Yellow Jersey. He does not have this one in stock at the moment but he can get it for you and he will. You will pay for the service. You will pay too much if you think of it as a price for a 40 year old chainring no one wants. If you think of it as a service charge for a search and remember he is paying way too much for shipping a single part from France it looks reasonable.

chainwhip

The bike in the OP is a good example:
$100 locally from CL seller.
Rough paint & decals, but good frame. Keeping.
Decent set of alloys wheels with useable tires and tubes. Keeping.
TA crankset, possibly valuable at resale. Will keep with a decent inner ring swap.
Pair of Suntour bar ends with hardware/fittings. Keeping.
Huret Jubilee(?) FD. Works quite well. Likely keeping.
Suntour Vx RD. Working well. Jubilee RD likely over my current budget.

Thanks for the leads, 63rickert. Yellowjersey had several parts for my last build.

The input on this thread is terrific. Hopefully others are enjoying it too.

Browsing "Retro roadies- old frames with STI's or Ergos" sent me down the mid-compact rabbit hole.

The buy was originally seen as a potential townie, but it seems to be telling me it wants more open road time. Mostly rolling terrain with several steep, but moderate length climbs where I live.



Borrowed 27" VO wheelset from my other Raleigh.