Here's a weird one I found and fixed up over the last week. There's almost no information on this bike on the Internet that I can find other than one image in a 1986 French Gitane catalog. It's Gitane's take on the early MTB for the French consumer; Rip-offs of the early lightweight Schwinn derived frames made by Joe Breeze and Tom Ritchey.
The Bike:
The frame is 53 cm C-T, built with rather a rather lightweight Camus carbone manganese tubeset. Fork is a heavy duty biplane fork probably taken from Gitane's tandem. Headset is to the French standard, the stem is a 22.0mm ITM BMX style stem. The bars are unbranded risers, though they feel to be of decent quality. Brakes are Weinmann CC420 with Dia Compe 280 levers. Derailleurs are both Simplex, as are the thumb shifters. SJA 103 MB front, SX630 GT rear, MB 2600/2601 plain friction thumbies. Crankset is a super lightweight Nervar triple with English threads for the pedals and the extractor (thank God) attached to a 127mm Nervar BB. Haven't checked if the BB is French threaded. The hubs are Maillard Helicomatic, laced to 26 inch Wolber Canyon rims. I haven't been able to figure out the exact model of the hubs, there are some questions I have about those that I'll have to do some digging around about. It has a wide range 5 speed freewheel.
The Ride:
It's fun! It's very stable, fun to whip around. Shifting is god awful, spacing on the freewheel is unacceptably wide, but it's almost charming in how poor it is. I wouldn't put this thing through a torture test or even off a two foot drop, but it might be fun on some trails for a laugh.
The Bike:
The frame is 53 cm C-T, built with rather a rather lightweight Camus carbone manganese tubeset. Fork is a heavy duty biplane fork probably taken from Gitane's tandem. Headset is to the French standard, the stem is a 22.0mm ITM BMX style stem. The bars are unbranded risers, though they feel to be of decent quality. Brakes are Weinmann CC420 with Dia Compe 280 levers. Derailleurs are both Simplex, as are the thumb shifters. SJA 103 MB front, SX630 GT rear, MB 2600/2601 plain friction thumbies. Crankset is a super lightweight Nervar triple with English threads for the pedals and the extractor (thank God) attached to a 127mm Nervar BB. Haven't checked if the BB is French threaded. The hubs are Maillard Helicomatic, laced to 26 inch Wolber Canyon rims. I haven't been able to figure out the exact model of the hubs, there are some questions I have about those that I'll have to do some digging around about. It has a wide range 5 speed freewheel.
The Ride:
It's fun! It's very stable, fun to whip around. Shifting is god awful, spacing on the freewheel is unacceptably wide, but it's almost charming in how poor it is. I wouldn't put this thing through a torture test or even off a two foot drop, but it might be fun on some trails for a laugh.
