Originally Posted by
Cycle Tourist
They're both 23 1/2" I worked around the frozen stem to clean and lube the headset on the red one. It wouldn't budge. I tried the old, "cut off the top and hacksaw" trick for the stem. It's the first time that didn't work! I finally got larger and larger drill bits until I could chisel out the rest. I jumped on the deal. His thought was there's one good bike in there so it was $50 for a rusty bike that might work with a lotta work.
The red one is getting all the original stuff, Huet, Normandy, Nervar steel square taper cranks. Pictures will follow.
The brown one is probably getting a repaint and probably several upgrades.
Repainting is certainly the way to go for the brown one, it’s already been repainted once so no harm there. Is the chrome missing on the brown one? Tough to tell from here. I see the paint has been scraped away to reveal some seriously high socks and long paintless stays. What color paint are you considering and will you be adding any decals?
Glad to here you were able to get the stem out of the red one somehow. Can’t wait to see how that white head tube turns out, it’s looking quite rusty but I’ll bet the paint’s still pretty good under there. These are a couple of nice finds!