hwheel72 

My guess is it a French frame due to Simplex Dropouts, Prugnat lugwork, fork crown... Maybe Gitane TDF. I don't believe it is a Peugeot.. I was gifted this with no history whatsoever. Let me know your thoughts..

oneclick 

That brake hanger says yes, as do the vent holes under the tops of the seatstays. Weigh it and tell us the seatpost diameter please.

francophile 

Fishmouth ends as well. And the "V O" stamping is typical on the Tour de France and Super Corsa models.

hwheel72 

Weight with the BB and headset installed is about 7.25 lbs... seat post diameter is 26.8mm . Thoughts?

rustystrings61 

Double check the seat post diameter - I would expect it to be 26.4, like every other Gitane TdF I’ve ever handled. Otherwise, it’s a TdF built with the Simplex ends that require a derailleur claw and would make an awesome fixed-gear or single-speed.

hwheel72 

I remeasured and I got a 26.52.. Super dialed in. I think we have a TDF.. Maybe?

rustystrings61 

I think you have a TdF - congratulations! My battered ‘71 converted to fixed-gear is one of my very favorite bikes ever! If yours is a 60cm to top, you are especially blessed - there is just something magical about that size TdF. DO clean, repack and cherish the stock Stronglight P3 headset; you may have to open out the headset locknut, but if you do that (and maybe run a brake cylinder hone down the inside of the lovely Nervor metric butted steerer tube) you should be able to fit a Nitto stem in there without sanding it down.

EDIT: you want to keep the stock headset for reasons of stack height - the P3 is 10 mm or so thinner than an old Campagnolo or a new Velo Orange - even the Stronglight V4 used on PX-10 is taller.

verktyg 

It's a US model 1971-72 Tour de France with Simplex Ref 881 dropouts sans derailleur hanger. During the Bike Boom Fad of the early 70's the demand for "10 Speed Racing Bikes" was so high that European component manufacturers were hard pressed to meet the demands. Gitane used as many as 5 different types of dropouts on the US Tour de France models including, rarely Campy dropouts (but that's another story).



The US model TdFs were "all" Reynolds 531 tubing except for the steerer, head tube, brake bridge and chain stay bridge. The forks and rear stays had chrome plated socks.

Only the 3 main tubes on the European versions were Reynolds 531, the rest of the tubes and fork blade were seemed light weight carbon steel tubing. Only the forks were 1/2 chrome plated. The European models came with either Simplex or Huret proprietary dropouts depending on which brand of derailleurs the bike came with.

About the end of 1971 or so, Gitane switched from Nervex Pro fork crowns to Nervex Dubois crowns. They also stopped brazing on the brake cable stop bridge on the seat stays - a cost saving move.




Most US TdF and Super Corsa frames were made of 1mm x .7mm thickness main tubes which was used in most European production bikes from the late 60's to the early 70's. Metric size tubing took a 26.4mm diameter seatpost.

Occasionally some frames were made with lighter gauge .9mm x .6mm Reynolds 531 tubing. One indicator is those frames take a 26.6mm seatpost. Caveat: the seat tube could have been reamed out to fit a larger seatpost but you could see a step down inside the seat tube.

What are your plans for the frame? If your are going to paint and restore it, Cyclomondo in OZ makes the best Gitane foil decals. I helped him design them. Greg is on eBay at Cyclomondo or the web at cyclomondo.net...

It should be a nice riding bike.

verktyg

hwheel72 

verktyg Thanks for all the info. As well as, thanks for all the others that contributed as well. Honestly, I'd really love to restore the frame but I'm also thinking of having a beater frame.Build it and ride it. The frame itself is in great condition just some speckles of rust. Easy to clean up.It was a terrible rattle can job so it would need a good strip and repaint. I will check out Cyclomondo as I would love decals.

I most likely will avoid Simplex derailleurs. My PX-10 has them and they shift great but hard to find good condition components. I think another post has some Camoy parts for reasonable. Definitely a beautiful Stronglight crank. Mafac center pulls,

If you have some ideas about parts, I'm open to suggestions. Thanks again!!

rustystrings61 

Should you choose to go with it as a beater frameset, here is an example of how that can turn out. Beware that what you think will be a beater may wind up at the top of your personal bike hierarchy! My '71 jostles for the top spot next to my beloved full custom Mercian, and the Mercian feels like home when I'm in its saddle.

The only stock item left on this bike is most of the stock P3 headset - a previous owner fitted it with a Zeus locknut. Phil Wood BB with French rings, Stronglight 93 (from a different Gitane!) modified for single chainring use, Kogswell sealed-bearing fixed/fixed hubset with MA3s, SR seatpost, B17, Nitto Technomic Deluxe stem with Nitto bars, old Dia-Compe aero levers (with the uber-cool electrical tape repair to a damaged hood!), MKS Sylvan pedals, Weinmann Carrera sidepulls, all on 28 mm Paselas. This was meant to be a beater bike to take on family vacations and it became my primary early morning Dawn Patrol choice. There is just something about this bike, some perfect blend of frame geometry and metric gauge 531 that simply WORKS. It's nimble AND stable, at the same time, when you punch it, it MOVES, and it's still comfortable on longer rides.



The beauty of having the ref. 881 dropouts (thanks for catalog pic, Chas.!) is that you can use ANY derailleur you want, should you choose to go that route. Total freedom! I think Stronglight cranks rule, you'll probably want Mafac Competitions rather than Racers, I would steer you towards Nitto bars and stems, and I have come to love Sun rims after building up wheelsets on both CR-18s and M13IIs.

francophile 

I've got a bag of misc P3/V4/S5 headset pieces I'd listed over in the sale forum. Doesn't look like any of that stuff will sell, so if you want to have a cohesive P3, I believe there's one top nut in that lot (upper/right quadrant), PM me and I'll get it out to you, on the house.

sykerocker 

Put another person in the "there are no beaters with a Tour de France no matter what quality the paint". I've had mine for 15 years now since my late wife bought it for me as a birthday gift, and it's still one of my favorite rides. Actually, being a Gitane, I don't think you want a really good paint job, just a nicely competent one.

francophile 

PS here is the (SC) I picked up yesterday on the cheap (relatively). PO told me he bought it new in 70, but components date it to 71. Said it was a 60, clearly is a 58 ctc. He swapped out the tubulars for clinchers shortly after buying. Not sure how much of the paint is salvageable. It's the first Tdf/SC I've ever owned that was all Simplex & Stronglight. I always seem to find ones that came with Sugino cranks and/or mismatched Campy/Simplex dropouts. Maybe a little jealous yours has Simplex 881s.

Anyway, a fine machine. I'm sure you'll enjoy yours. As someone who's had a couple, I really enjoy, and would argue the 58 feels identical to the 60 for me, both are in my size range, one the low end, one the high.

francophile 

And to this point, it's worth noting they were using single stage paint on these bikes (no clearcoat). A fine polish (compound is overkill) will get these things shining like a diamond. But you can't fix some of the crappier finish work, which I've learned to accept as characteristic. For example, look at my last pic of the fork ends. Note how poorly someone finished the steel blade ends before sending it off for chrome. The seatstay cap area can be a real mess also. Sometimes the geometry is really variable also, which I can't even begin to understand.

rustystrings61 

Mine is 60 cm to top, so about 58 cm square c-c; I think Gitane is French for "Forget how it looks, focus on how it rides!" I always wanted but never scored one with the willow-leaf stay caps, mine have always been the swaged-over variety. Francophile's orange TdF is lovely and were it mine I would clean and scrub everything, replace the consumables and fit a good Ideale or Brooks saddle and call it done. Maybe fine a nicer set of Simplex Competition dt shifters, but that's it!
@francophile, thanks for the offer, but the mismatched Zeus locknut has grown on me. I wonder if the previous owner fitted it specifically so it would clear a non-French stem. At any rate, it works, and I am happy with it.

Somewhere I recall reading that TdFs are found with three different fork bends/rakes, though how gospel that statement is I couldn't say. You can see the difference between my green '71 and Francophile's orange one, though - the bend on his starts higher up and looks like a bigger radius than mine.

francophile 

I was surprised this had Prestige vs. Criterium shifters. I think you'll need to step up to the latter half of the 1970s to find the three-circle leaf stay caps. Good news is, they added to two models, CdM and TdF. Bad news is, you rarely see those in the US. I think all the CdM and TdF also had honeycomb dropouts too? I'd need to dig on the Bible of Gitane by Chas to investigate

No problem, just looking to help out a fellow Frenchie fanatic. French is only 0.2mm smaller. The Zues top nut may actually be close enough (0.1mm around peripheral) it just naturally fits. I just had to hammer a 22.2 stem out of my '80/'81 Grand Record steerer tube. PO had it down into the steer tube a good inch. No cracks or obvious swelling of the steer tube observed from this, either.

I bet chas (tag, verktyg !) can speak to the point about rake and geometry. I always felt like the taper on the seat stays was wildly fat at the top on the TdF/SC of this era, but very fine at the tip.

While I mention geometric variations in these above, I haven't seen anything nearly as wild as you'll find with the PX-10 ... Peugeot was sacrément sauvage with their tubing angles. I don't know if it was because of the sheer number of bikes they were trying to kick out or what. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear some guys were building without strict jigs, and someone, at some point, dropped some boxes of tubing, mixing them up, and tried to cover their ass afterwards, sending mixed boxes of tubing to the build line

ShannonM

If you're gonna go geared, and are not committed to an OG build, I'd get one of the long-cage Suntour rear derailleurs with the threaded claw. I think there were even claw-mount Cyclones. Vx-GT, for sure. Best-shifitng claw-mount derailleurs ever made, cheap and easy to find, and the derailleurs are exactly the same as the screw-mount versions.

Of course, there was a claw-mount long-cage Jubilee...

--Shannon