Follis
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Follis
I picked up this Follis today. I'm not quite sure what I plan to do with it. It's not my size and so I'll probably end up selling it after getting it road worthy. The bike was repainted by the PO who did a pretty good job. He masked off the decals, the chrome, and head tube. The paint job looks good and the decals are great.
The bike may have decent tubing (reynolds 531?). It has forged simplex dropouts and the seatpost diameter is 26.8. The stem is weird; it measures 20.2 and has some funky British handlebars with very cool engravings. The bars had some pretty nice black cinelli plugs. The wheels are fairly nondescript high flange hubs (normandy? with "Bloc G" skewers), cyclo competition freewheel, and mavic tubular rims. The tubulars are old but they hold air. The stronglight 93 crank is pretty nice and the simplex criterium RD is fully functional. The brakes say "racer" but they don't say mafac.
I have a set of nice 27 inch alloy wheels lying around that I'll probably use to turn this bike into a townie with 1 x 6 gearing and upright bars. This is the bike as found in the wild.
I also wanted to give a shout out to @juvela and @francophile for helping me suss this bike out while I was trying to figure out whether to buy it or not.
Edit: the weird stem the bike came with is totally wrong for the bike. Not surprisingly a French Atax stem I had in my parts bin fit perfectly.
This is the bike as found in the wild:
The bike may have decent tubing (reynolds 531?). It has forged simplex dropouts and the seatpost diameter is 26.8. The stem is weird; it measures 20.2 and has some funky British handlebars with very cool engravings. The bars had some pretty nice black cinelli plugs. The wheels are fairly nondescript high flange hubs (normandy? with "Bloc G" skewers), cyclo competition freewheel, and mavic tubular rims. The tubulars are old but they hold air. The stronglight 93 crank is pretty nice and the simplex criterium RD is fully functional. The brakes say "racer" but they don't say mafac.
I have a set of nice 27 inch alloy wheels lying around that I'll probably use to turn this bike into a townie with 1 x 6 gearing and upright bars. This is the bike as found in the wild.
I also wanted to give a shout out to @juvela and @francophile for helping me suss this bike out while I was trying to figure out whether to buy it or not.
Edit: the weird stem the bike came with is totally wrong for the bike. Not surprisingly a French Atax stem I had in my parts bin fit perfectly.
This is the bike as found in the wild:
Last edited by bikemig; 08-11-16 at 06:41 AM.
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really beautiful bike! weird to see such an inappropriate seat...in it's day, that was a TdeF caliber bike...
#3
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Cool to see it in better pictures. Glad you picked this one up, it's a really rare bird. When you mentioned it, I was like, "holy crap!!"
Any idea what the original color was? Was the person you bought it from the original owner?
Any idea what the original color was? Was the person you bought it from the original owner?
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Why do you think it was a TdF caliber bike? I'm thinking it may well have had nice tubing but the parts mix (other than the crank and the derailleurs) are pretty low end I think.
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The original color was green as well. You can see it through the decals that were masked off. I couldn't get a lot of detail from the seller; his buddy owned it and obviously liked bikes but they couldn't figure out how to get this bike road worthy again.
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Anyway, I give the saddles to the co-op. There are always people looking for them there. I always liked Follis. You don't see them a lot, even here in the Bay Area.
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The 26.8mm seatpost and forged dropouts are great indicators of quality.
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"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." --Theodore Roosevelt
Capo: 1959 Modell Campagnolo, S/N 40324; 1960 Sieger (2), S/N 42624, 42597
Carlton: 1962 Franco Suisse, S/N K7911
Peugeot: 1970 UO-8, S/N 0010468
Bianchi: 1982 Campione d'Italia, S/N 1.M9914
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"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." --Theodore Roosevelt
Capo: 1959 Modell Campagnolo, S/N 40324; 1960 Sieger (2), S/N 42624, 42597
Carlton: 1962 Franco Suisse, S/N K7911
Peugeot: 1970 UO-8, S/N 0010468
Bianchi: 1982 Campione d'Italia, S/N 1.M9914
Schwinn: 1988 Project KOM-10, S/N F804069
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This could be a much nicer bike than I originally thought.
(1) The freewheel is a 5 speed cyclo competition, 14-22: Vintage Cyclo Competition Freewheel 14 22 5 Speed French Threaded France | eBay
(2) The bike might well be a Follis 172 with a 531 DB main triangle. This is a good site (in French) about Follis bikes: FOLLIS - Joseph FOLLIS - Marcel FOLLIS - ANCIENS VELOS LYONNAIS There is some really neat discussion of Follis back when it was hot stuff in pro races. Neat stuff. If you scroll down, you'll find catalog pages in English back in the 70s when Follis was trying to make inroads into the US market.
My bike has the chrome of the Follis 172 and the parts group--while not the same as in the catalog--looks roughly of the same quality. The higher end bikes are full 531, have a nicer parts group, and use nice stainless cable guides. The 172 has braze on cable guides in exactly the same position as on the bike I bought. So I think this is a Follis 172.
(1) The freewheel is a 5 speed cyclo competition, 14-22: Vintage Cyclo Competition Freewheel 14 22 5 Speed French Threaded France | eBay
(2) The bike might well be a Follis 172 with a 531 DB main triangle. This is a good site (in French) about Follis bikes: FOLLIS - Joseph FOLLIS - Marcel FOLLIS - ANCIENS VELOS LYONNAIS There is some really neat discussion of Follis back when it was hot stuff in pro races. Neat stuff. If you scroll down, you'll find catalog pages in English back in the 70s when Follis was trying to make inroads into the US market.
My bike has the chrome of the Follis 172 and the parts group--while not the same as in the catalog--looks roughly of the same quality. The higher end bikes are full 531, have a nicer parts group, and use nice stainless cable guides. The 172 has braze on cable guides in exactly the same position as on the bike I bought. So I think this is a Follis 172.
Last edited by bikemig; 08-11-16 at 01:20 PM.
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The Stronglight 93 won many TdeFs......
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The stronglight 93 9s around 300 grams lighter than a campy NR crank as per velobase and you can get a 37 tooth inner for the 93 (which puts you almost in compact crank land), 122 BCD Conventional Chainring, 37 Teeth
Stronglight made beautiful, light cranks and the 93 is visually my favorite.
#19
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I never knew a 37T 122mm BCD chainring existed. Without the repo you referenced, they would be rarer than a 41T 144mm ring.
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"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." --Theodore Roosevelt
Capo: 1959 Modell Campagnolo, S/N 40324; 1960 Sieger (2), S/N 42624, 42597
Carlton: 1962 Franco Suisse, S/N K7911
Peugeot: 1970 UO-8, S/N 0010468
Bianchi: 1982 Campione d'Italia, S/N 1.M9914
Schwinn: 1988 Project KOM-10, S/N F804069
"Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing." --Theodore Roosevelt
Capo: 1959 Modell Campagnolo, S/N 40324; 1960 Sieger (2), S/N 42624, 42597
Carlton: 1962 Franco Suisse, S/N K7911
Peugeot: 1970 UO-8, S/N 0010468
Bianchi: 1982 Campione d'Italia, S/N 1.M9914
Schwinn: 1988 Project KOM-10, S/N F804069
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Damn, that's nice! You're quickly becoming the C&V master of Middle Earth!
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#23
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Similar model
Resurrecting this old thread as this is the first example I’ve been able to find of a Follis that with a frame and fork that resembles the one I just acquired. The key details being the plane lugs, top tube cable stops and bottom tube pump pegs that don’t fit into the old catalog images that always seem to come up in Follis threads. I have my suspicions about the Vitus decals as they appear to be in better condition than the paint (although the clearly stock bottom tube decal does as well), the frame tubing sticker is a little crooked and appears to occupy real estate that should have been covered by the wavy foil decal. The seat post is some where between 26 and 27 mm (not marked haven’t busted out the digital caliper yet). It feels pretty light for its Low- Mid range component spec and, however unscientific, the main tubes produce a light hollow pinging noise when flicked with a fingernail.
Bikemig whatever became of your Follis? Now six years on can anyone offer any additional information?
Bikemig whatever became of your Follis? Now six years on can anyone offer any additional information?
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The Nervar Star crankset, like all Nervar alloy cotterless cranksets, is vastly underrated. I used to see them as an also ran to the magnificent Stronglight 93, but now I think they have their advantages. First, they take a standard 22.0 mm puller; second, if you wind up with the version that took 128 mm bcd chainrings, you can Dremel the bolt holes of a 130 mm chainring inward 1 mm each and it works beautifully and doesn't look too bad. I've done it and was happy with the results.
Follis made lovely bikes. It's a score!
Follis made lovely bikes. It's a score!
Likes For rustystrings61:
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Now six years on can anyone offer any additional information?
Mine is one of the three tubes butted frames, which was second in the lineup, down from the top.
It came with the same somewhat ugly stem, and the same Nervar crank. If you look at the Follis history page, I think it's the Model 172 (scroll down to the 1970's catalog pages.)
The paint was a little better on mine, but the foil stickers were faded and damaged. I bought the seat tube sticker from Velocals (link), and did a little touchup on the silver paint. If i were redoing your bike, I'd just strip and repaint the whole thing, with all new stickers. Silver is one of those colors that can be difficult to match, because there are so many versions of it.