Late 40s / Early 50s René Herse tip find

[JCS]

This is a fascinating thread.
What a cool bike. It’s great that it was saved from the scrapper.

Is there much of a bike industry left in France? I.e. independent frame builders etc?

 

[dirttorpedo]

Not on these cranks because the originals are 3 bolt and Stronglights are 5.

Will modern Rene Herse/Compass bikes rings fit on a vintage 3 bolt Rene Herse crank?

 

[Jonny69]

I *think* they’re backwards compatible.

 

[Jonny69]

Interesting resource which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the brand. Lots of pictures.

https://www.reneherse.com/

 

[Jonny69]

Managed to do a couple of jobs I've been putting off.

1. Remove the wobbly reflector and tap the back of the mudguard back into shape where it's a bit bashed in.

The nut was just spinning the stud in the plastic reflector, so I cut a slot in the end of the thread with a 1mm disc in the grinder. Stuck a screwdriver in the slot and really leaned on it while turning the nut with a spanner. Job jobbed. Used a bodywork hammer to tap the bottom of the guard back into shape. It's not perfect but it's much better now.

 

[Jonny69]

2. Remove the broken screw from the chainstay bridge so I can re-fit the mudguard screw.

Ok, this is going to be a bit of a how-to with Easy Outs and what to do when they don't work (because it didn't).

First, if you can, file the end of what's left flat:



Make your life a bit easier - put what you're working on in a position where it's stable and where you have decent access:



Next centre punch the centre of the screw as close to the centre as you can get it. A little tip to help free things off is if you get a little hammer and tap away at the stuck bit for a few minutes. Don't really hit it, just tappity tap tap away. You're not aiming to deform anything, just start to break the hold that the corrosion has. Then drill a hole down the broken bit. I started with 3mm for my Easy Out and chickened out and finished it off with a 2.5mm. You can see I didn't get it perfectly centred:



Insert the Easy Out and tap it in lightly. Again, you don't want to really hammer it in, you just want to get it to bite in a bit so it can get a good grip:



Then you can start to wind it out using a tap wrench. Now, you either get lucky with these or you don't. There is a bit of skill involved, but it's mostly making a judgment call about whether it's about to break, slip, or if it's chewing up. In my case, it didn't budge in the slightest and then broke through the side where I didn't drill the hole particularly well in the centre:



That's basically not coming out. I'd suggest this happened because of a combination of my hole not being very well centred and I could have probably done with drilling a smaller hole. All is not lost though, because my backup plan was to simply drill it out and re-tap the thread. So I went through with a 4mm drill and tapped it with an M5 tap:



You'd normally drill to 4.2mm for M5, but I wanted to leave plenty of contingency metal in there and let the tap do the work instead. After tidying up the outside, I have a nice clean thread to pop a fresh screw into:

 

[Jonny69]

I ordered up some M6 x 8mm x 16mm shoulder bolts yesterday afternoon and they unexpectedly dropped through the door this morning! I got stainless ones, because the carbon steel ones have a black knurled finish on the head that thought might look a bit out of place. These look just fine imo:



Perfect fit on the bolts themselves. After a bit of faffing with the springs, the best fit seems to be with the original RH springs as the Mafac ones are 90° out and I don’t think I want to drill new holes in the spring bosses.



I found the missing nut for the rear mudguard.

So that’s it. Cables, chain and bar tape and it’s road legal and ready to ride!

 

[Jonny69]

First ride then. I took it into Staines and a couple of miles down the towpath. Gearing set on 48x20.

So it’s not a fast bike. What do I mean by that? It doesn’t take a lot to push it along, but it doesn’t want to go fast. It’s not like my 1938 Parkes which is springy and zips along. It’s happier just ambling along at a steady pace. It’s quite difficult to haul around when out the saddle, but this might just be the short stem and shape of the bars.

Steering feels quite old fashioned - it’s got that 26” roadster feel about it. I guess a contributor to how this feels this is the short stem and very narrow bars. I wouldn’t call it nimble like my Parkes is, but it feels perfectly sure-footed flying round roundabouts at speed. It soaks up the bumps extremely well.

So all in, I could see this being a pretty pleasant ride once loaded up and making use of the gearing, just pedalling along at a sensible pace.

The 48x20 gear was a bit too twiddly for me and it was cross-chaining ever so slightly and occasionally catching a tooth on the freewheel. When I got back I swapped it down one to 48x18 which is closer to the gearing I normally ride (about 72gi) and the chainline is improved. It definitely made a difference to the ride quality too.

So next on the list is to see what I can do to sort out the derailleur and reinstate the gears. After I’ve had a bit of a ride though.

 

[Joe_Rides]

Looks cool AF.

Those mudguards are dreamy.

 

[Jonny69]

Looks cool AF.

Those mudguards are dreamy.

They’re a really good fit and they don’t rattle or clatter. 70+ years old!