Bledfor Days

My cheapo Nomade is almost done. Bars are bent

Bledfor Days

I finally managed to reassemble my 73 Nomade. I don't have the Rigida wheels built yet so I put on a Sun CR18 set of 27" wheels on for now. I kept the DiaCompe turkey levers and the stem mount Huret shifters. I had the seat too low in the pics. New Jagwire housing and Fizik bar wrap have given me another blue and white bike in the house. The sticker says it was from the Valpo bike shop in Valparaiso Indiana. I got it off Craigslist in LaGrand Oregon and brought it home to Vancouver B.C. I feel fast on it !

auchencrow

Nice, @Bledfor Days - and I'm sure the new wheels make it "feel" 10 lbs lighter.

due ruote 

rootboy 

HooWee. Peppermint bars! Cool.

DanielWilde

1977 Motobecane Le Champion

Bianchigirll 

Here is my Moto Woody but I am sure this thread was intended for older bikes

auchencrow

Yeah BG, but at least your "after" picture has a gumwall tire and old-fashioned spoke reflectors.

auchencrow

Looks great Daniel . I'd only suggest routing those cables behind the bars, for a slightly smoother routing.
Huret Duopar? Cool.

Bianchigirll 

clean your screen and look again......

Phil_gretz

My 83/84 Mirage Sport, ridden in the '87 Tour de Sewer in LA. Sorry for the poor photo quality
. I don't have the bike anymore. Wish that I did. I think that we have some photo in an album if a bike ride in the early 80s in Newport Beach. That might provide better detail. Phil

DanielWilde

Thank you! I'll change the cable routing asap, it was just a quick soultion - as I had no new white cable routes at that time, I had to shorten the old ones to reuse them.

Huret Success Titanium. The bike is fully Reynolds 531 and was the model beyond the Team Champion.

Bianchigirll 

How are they bent?

Bledfor Days

@Bianchigirll The right side was bent slightly upward and back from the stem. The left side had a slight upward bend. I gently persuaded them back a bit.

iluvnoise

My '76 Grand Record


https://www.dropbox.com/s/seswhsu8bm...-43-57_968.jpg

auchencrow

Loovely!

eschlwc

^ the paint that begs for red tape and gumwalls.

i once tried using honey tape and a honey saddle on mine. that lasted a couple months. kind of an expensive trial when removing $50 leather tape.

eschlwc

are those bars steel? they're so shiny, and there's no raised area around the clamp.

dck

Not entirely all original. This is what it looked like when I brought it home from the thrift store. Still not bad for a $10 investment.

As you can see i ditched the rear rack, replaced the saddle with a correct Ideale 80, all new cables, bar tape, top tube cable clamps, pedals with toeclips, and mounted a set of Normandy Competition hubs laced to Superchampion 700C tubular rims with sewups.

Bledfor Days

Yes they are steel. There is a small raised section inside the stem clamp.

eschlwc

ya gotta toss 'em then. they weigh a ton and aluminum bars are too easy to be had for $10.

even if you find crappy looking aluminum bars, you're gonna tape over most of it. for the logo/clamp area, deanodize them with aerosol oven cleaner (with lye, like 'oven off'), letting 'em sit in the poison for 15 minutes, then you can make 'em pretty with 3m auto sandpaper and mother's polish.

i overhauled a cheapo schwinn last year with steel bars, replacing them with aluminum, and it makes a helluva difference. it's about the easiest upgrade you can make besides unbolting the kickstand.

Bledfor Days

Too late. I'm already riding it. Funny you mentioned the kickstand. It came with a nice Pletscher stand. I polished it up and use it. It's a low end bike with low end options and dammit, I'm going to use them :-) I left the pant guard on the chainrings too. It has dork sticks on the brakes also.

Lascauxcaveman 

Here's my '82 Jubile Sport I picked up a little while ago. Original owner said he bought it new in 1985, so I'm guessing this one was an unwanted refugee stuck in the back corner of the bikeshop somewhere. When i took it off his hands, it was all original (as purchased "new") except for the front tire. Somewhere in the 3-model-year gap before he bought it, the bike acquired some of that horrible foam bar wrap to replace the leather/pleather stuff it shows in the catalogue for that year. That won't be on the bike much longer, I assure you.




Looking at the 1982 Moto catalogue reveals that the Vx rd that came on the bike was non-spec for this model, so before photographing it, I pulled a very nice correct Blueline rd out of my parts bin to match the rest of the BL bits on the bike. It shifts the same as the Vx, and weighs only 40g more


Correct Blueline up front was still in place, as well as the nifty METAL "M" branded dust caps over the crank bolts. Details, man, details.


I ditched the original suede saddle for something that won't cramp my @ss.


And put some chubby (32mm) Paselas on the skinny 13-20 Rigida blue label rims to see if they would fit. They do - just barely. They ride really nice if you pump them up all the way. I think this is the right tire for the bike, but maybe in the 28mm size next time.

The stickers on this thing are the only casualty of time; there are some owies on both sides of the downtube; the Vitus 888 tubing sticker (up in photo 2) is all gouged up.


I thought these things were made in Taiwan or Malaysia or something?

Bledfor Days

@Lascauxcaveman That's a fantastic looking bike. Your picture quality is unreal. What kind of camera are you taking those with?

Lascauxcaveman 

This one was done with the cheapo $70 14MP Kodak EZshare I got for my daughter about 3 Xmases ago. The secret is to get back away from the bike, use the zoom, and be patient with the auto focus; holding the shutter button halfway down until the camera zeroes in on the main focal point, then squeeze the rest of the way for the shot. Good light helps a great deal; I shot this one in the dying evening light of a clear Pacific Northwest day. Golden tones! Augmented by the camera's flash on all pix except the one of the saddle.

If you want to get a really great SUPER CHEAP camera for this kind of work, hie thee over to the big auction site and buy a Fuji FinePix 2800, like I used on my Pretty in Pink Univega photo essay. It's only 2 megapixels, but has amazing optics for a $30 camera. That one was shot on another good, strong afternoon light kind of day.

Happy shooting!