scarlson 

I see we've got series 1 (pinch bolt seat clamp) and series 2 (grub screw). I like this nomenclature.

Based on the spreadsheet, E, F, and I are clearly for English, French, and Italian threads, and A is likely for the earliest frames of 1980-81 which were all French threaded, as stated above.

Within series 1, I think we can go finer-grained, mainly by looking at forks. Earliest forks appear to have fender eyelets on the dropouts and an aluminum steerer, as seen on the PX10DU number F037938. Says it's from '83 but who knows how long the frame took to percolate through the distribution supply chains. Later forks have the aluminum steerer without the dropout eyelets, as seen on the Fraysse-badged 979 number E059271. I have no idea when they discontinued the aluminum steerer, but number E078918 came to us with a steel steerer, and that's still a series 1 frame.

I think the aluminum steerer might explain why a lot of ebay auctions are for frames without forks. E059271's original aluminum steerer broke at the threads just below the top headset cup, so we had to replace the fork. It wasn't super dangerous, as the stem still held things together. The steering got progressively wonky as the top part of the headset separated, but the bike was rideable home.

Since Ebay listings don't stay archived forever, it might be good if we get an ID of at least series 1 or 2, color, any possible year and threading information from seller description, and fork information from each listing, and add that to the google sheet. Having a list of serials is only as useful as the data associated with that list.

We might find some more details if we could get ahold of Mike Fraysse. Anybody know how to reach him?

Eventually, I think the aspirational goal should be to establish years based off of the different serials. Hopefully it is possible.

tmnguuyen 

Below is my Friend's 979, SN E131374.


I also picked up mine from the goodwill store. The bike I think has never been on the road, a NOS if you will. The wheels are mismatched, front one has durace hub with mavic open pro cd, back wheel has TNT hub, with mavic reflex.

picture of the fork:

seatpost - Douglas saddle, never heard of it.

stem - Is threadless or quill? can't really tell... I have disassemble to find out.

paper work:


inside the "Rouler facile et sur' carnet the SN does not match with the warrantee card and dated 6/6/1989 and has a Nashbar store stamp in it. . The SN is not the same on the bike, may be a clerical error. However, the date and the SN on the brochure don't support the SN/date code scheme.

Chombi1 

Serial number on my Vitus Plus Carbone 7 is: E085321Serial number on my Peugeot PY10FC is: E099316
​​​​​​​I might be wrong, but I estimated that both bikes were made in 1986.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Chombi1 

​​​​​​​I've never seen any Vitus frames,aluminum or CF, that had straight legged forks. Might thst be replacement??

Andy Antipas 

Here are the serial numbers off my bikes:

979 = E095679
Carbone-7 = E081536
Peugeot PY-10FC = E099516

Lotus907efi

Here is a very early 979 frame looking really nice with gold tubes
I say it's early because it's got the horizontal pinch bolt for the seat post but it has external routing across the top tube for the rear brake cable and because the "Vitus 979" on the fork is a stamped in logo rather than a decal.

Unfortunately this bike sold on ebay and the seller did not include a photo showing the serial number on the bottom bracket lug.
The URL for the completed sale on ebay is https://www.ebay.com/itm/304679600255

Mackers

E124661 - 979 in blue with the new design seat post binder but weirdly only down tube water bosses.

fricker61

Okay, I'll join in. I recently bought a Vitus 979, and I've been trying to figure out the age. Here are the details:

Serial # E099259
Grub screw seatpost
Bottle bosses on seat and downtube
Pump peg on head tube
Shimano 600EX SIS 6-speed group with 1986 date codes
It appears to have only had the VITUS decal with horizontal stripes on the top tube, and the 979 decals on the fork, and MAYBE on the down tube, hidden by a shop sticker

I hope this helps unravel the mystery in some small way.

Tim Fricker
Vienna VA USA

fricker61

Oh, and for anyone on Facebook, there's a Vintage Vitus group that might be a good source of more info and serial numbers.

Tim Fricker
Vienna VA USA

Chris 979

I found the on-the-drops.blogspot (authored by Peter Kohler) a document to be a great reference for this bicycle and the impact it had on the market, and the sport itself. Peter’s efforts and insight are much appreciated.

I have acquired a Vitus 979 last year, and started a restoration process as I had a great frame, but it had a frankenstein equipment not matching the 80's or the type of bike at all.

This document was essential to my pursuit, and I used the method provided to decipher the actual year. My serno started with E063xxx (one letter, followed by 6 digits)...

I deducted that this frame was E (A->80, B->81, C->82, D->83, E->84, F->85)from 1984... but then the 06, would indicate a 1986, and the 3 would be March, the xxx indicating the number of bikes produced that month...

So there was a problem with the deciphering, the letter AND the first two digits could not be the year. . . if not the year, was what is the letter representing ?

I proceeded to look at all Vitus bikes I could get a serno from, and ebay was a good source for that. What I could not find was any other letters used in the serno besides: A, E, F and I...

.. and here is what I believe based on the answers I got from people owning 979 with serno starting with letters E, F, or I: E stands for English Bottom Bracket, F for French Bottom Bracket, and I for Italian ones.

So what does the A represents ? Simply the first production frames that were produced with a french bottom bracket and before they produced other types of bottom brackets (this is my hypothesis, and I am still looking for validation on that point).


Now, onto the remaining digits... Sorry Peter, but I do not see how the two next digits could represent the production year and the following digit representing the month of production within the year.


Simply put, a friend of mine purchased a new Vitus in 1988, and the serno is already E103xxx. The deciphering approach was breaking down again.

Now onto the month coding. First, as mentioned in a post earlier, you need two digits, so it should be 01, 02, 03.. to 12, or if they use the next two to represent double digits months (from 10 to 12), it would drive an extra digit in the overall serno size (9 digits for bikes produced in Oct, Nov, Dec)... I have not seen any serno on a Vitus 979 frame with more than 1 letter (A, E, F or I), and 6 digits (123456). Never 7 digits, meaning that 3 months of the year could not be encoded in the serno.

Now, let's assume that the 3rd digit in the serno is the month, it leaves only 3 digits to represent the production number in this month. What do you do for frames 1000+ (again, the production volume was over 15,000 (possibly 17,000 frames in 1984, which means you have many months were more than 1000 frames were produced)... So this is another reason why this encoding approach does not work...

I believe the deciphering is more simple:
first letter A (1980-1981), then E, F and I in later years as additional bottom bracket types were produced, and the 7 digits represented just the sequential production number. . .

To find out the actual year, you need to know how many frames were produced each year... You can approximate this knowing that within each each between 1981 to 1984 between 15,000 (1981) to 17,000 (1984) frames were produced, and 10,000 frames were produced in 1980. . .

So based on the above, my bike frame was likely to be a 1984 bike frame. .

Happy to go over the above in more details, and with additional supporting information... and if you have a response to that, I am more than happy to reconsider. . .

Sincerely,

Christian

Chris 979

I found the on-the-drops.blogspot (authored by Peter Kohler) a document to be a great reference for this bicycle and the impact it had on the market, and the sport itself. Peter’s efforts and insight are much appreciated.

I have acquired a Vitus 979 last year, and started a restoration process as I had a great frame, but it had a frankenstein equipment not matching the 80's or the type of bike at all.

This document was essential to my pursuit, and I used the method provided to decipher the actual year. My serno started with E063xxx (one letter, followed by 6 digits)...

I deducted that this frame was E (A->80, B->81, C->82, D->83, E->84, F->85)from 1984... but then the 06, would indicate a 1986, and the 3 would be March, the xxx indicating the number of bikes produced that month...

So there was a problem with the deciphering, the letter AND the first two digits could not be the year. . . if not the year, was what is the letter representing ?

I proceeded to look at all Vitus bikes I could get a serno from, and ebay was a good source for that. What I could not find was any other letters used in the serno besides: A, E, F and I...

.. and here is what I believe based on the answers I got from people owning 979 with serno starting with letters E, F, or I: E stands for English Bottom Bracket, F for French Bottom Bracket, and I for Italian ones.

So what does the A represents ? Simply the first production frames that were produced with a french bottom bracket and before they produced other types of bottom brackets (this is my hypothesis, and I am still looking for validation on that point).


Now, onto the remaining digits... Sorry Peter, but I do not see how the two next digits could represent the production year and the following digit representing the month of production within the year.


Simply put, a friend of mine purchased a new Vitus in 1988, and the serno is already E103xxx. The deciphering approach was breaking down again.

Now onto the month coding. First, as mentioned in a post earlier, you need two digits, so it should be 01, 02, 03.. to 12, or if they use the next two to represent double digits months (from 10 to 12), it would drive an extra digit in the overall serno size (9 digits for bikes produced in Oct, Nov, Dec)... I have not seen any serno on a Vitus 979 frame with more than 1 letter (A, E, F or I), and 6 digits (123456). Never 7 digits, meaning that 3 months of the year could not be encoded in the serno.

Now, let's assume that the 3rd digit in the serno is the month, it leaves only 3 digits to represent the production number in this month. What do you do for frames 1000+ (again, the production volume was over 15,000 (possibly 17,000 frames in 1984, which means you have many months were more than 1000 frames were produced)... So this is another reason why this encoding approach does not work...

I believe the deciphering is more simple:
first letter A (1980-1981), then E, F and I in later years as additional bottom bracket types were produced, and the 7 digits represented just the sequential production number. . .

To find out the actual year, you need to know how many frames were produced each year... You can approximate this knowing that within each each between 1981 to 1984 between 15,000 (1981) to 17,000 (1984) frames were produced, and 10,000 frames were produced in 1980. . .

So based on the above, my bike frame was likely to be a 1984 bike frame. .

Happy to go over the above in more details, and with additional supporting information... and if you have a response to that, I am more than happy to reconsider. . .

Sincerely,

Christian

Hproduguidon

I am French and I live in France to have several vitus 979 of several different years, they all have the letter F, I am on a group of collectors and all vitus 979 have the letter F except one I can even affirm you that the 979 second generation with the screw last the saddle they also have the letter F, therefore F for French bicycle or bicycles with the French step.
.

shdwfx

Just dusting off my old Vitus 979 which bought new almost 36 years ago but haven't ridden in years. I'd like to contribute to this thread by adding the specs for mine as follows:

Serial no. E 106433
Purchased new in October of 1987 (still have my receipt)
Grub screw on seatpost
Bottle bosses on both downtube and seattube
No pump peg

Robvolz 

how timely.

I'm selling a Vitus right now. As far as I can tell, this was either kept in the rafters on display and never ridden, or part of a museum collection.



https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...-top-tube.html

Hummer

Thanks Christian for this work. I am now able to make sense of the Vitus 979 serial numbers.

I have catalogued over 80 serial numbers for Vitus 979 frames. I now see the pattern with the prefix letters.

I have one prefix letter to add.

I have only seen this letter reported once and no pictures of the serial number or frame, so this could be an incorrect report. The prefix letter was "C", and if correct could possible represent Confoederatio Helvetica. Swiss threading?

Edit:
I went back and looked at the forum that reported the "C" prefix serial number for a Vitus frame. The frame was a Vitus cylco-cross frame, which would mean Vitus 787 and not Vitus 797.

So ignore the comment about the "C" prefix for Vitus 979 serial numbers.

Vitus 787 frames have a similar but different serial number system and "C" prefix is found sometimes.

Hummer

I have been cataloguing serial numbers for several years, including Vitus serial numbers.

Vitus offered 3 different aluminum/carbon tube sets standards: 979, 787, and 992. From my data I can see different serial number patterns for each of these tube sets.

The subject serial number is one of the Vitus 992 formats.

This format appears to have date encoding. The first digit is year and the next two are month, so January 1995. The tube set decal is consistent with the date.