Mystery Bike ! 1950 French Randonneuse 650B

[Cavalier]

I've had a quick look for some info on your Rubis frame and it seems that it was a top quality tubing brand owned by Atelier de la Rive (who later made Vitus tubing). I found this quote:

Ateliers de la Rive, a company based on the outskirts of St Etienne, France, started making tubes in 1931. In the early post WW2 years their premium tubing was called Rubis, and widely used by French quality frame builders.

So everything seemed fine and then I found an article about French tubing manufacturers which had this to say:

In the 1930s there was a French brand of light weight tubing called Rubis. It's unclear whether it was affiliated with Ateliers de la Rive but it may have been a predecessor of Durifort and Vitus tubing .

So it's a case of two steps forward and one step back, however, at least both sources do agree that Rubis was a quality tubing (although they may not seem to know who made it)!!!

 

[bduc61]

Re:

See here more info about this tubing - but in french

http://veloretrocourse.proboards.com/th ... s-le-temps

To cut the story short

before the war WW2, the three important french makes were separate


- DURIFORT, Ateliers de la Rive à Unieux, Loire 42
- RUBIS, Société Métallurgique de Montbard-Aulnoye, devenue VALLOUREC http://www.vallourec.com/fr/groupe/histoire/
- VITUS, Le Petit Tube de Précision à Maison-Alfort Val-de-Marne 94



After the war but much later

DURIFORT et VITUS merged but in 1972.

Difficult to know what happened to the cycling tubing RUBIS ( name was possibly bought by Vitus )
Vallourec became more of an heavy industrial tubing manufactuerer . ( Oil industry etc...)

 

[bduc61]

Re:

.

One of the most interesting feature of the bike is the brake levers. They are the first ever aero levers where the brake housing run along the bar and not with a top exit.

They are FREXEL









Very few bikes of the era sports such brakes.

One of the them is the Dujardin pictured above

Another is a bike from Lionel Brans.

This cyclist and actually also a framemaker is famous because he embarked in 1948 in a trip Paris to Saigon in Vietnam. ( he had to shorten its trip at the end) but he rode most of it - more than 12000 km - during 8 months.
Here a link for the french speaking cyclists

http://www.crlv.org/astrolabe/marsavril ... a%C3%AFgon

His bike sports the same brakes, and it allowed him to have a double command ( such as in certain cyclocross bars)
My bike was possibly influenced by this Brans build ( also hellenic seatstays)









One of the details I particularly like about this bike is the paint on the fenders which are well suited to the frame black and green colours. Fenders are the very classic Lefol Le Paon.








As nice is the crankset known as the Diamond Stronglight. Quite rare and nearly impossible to find some chainrings replacement :?






The pedals are also quite special as they don't have an axle that goes through !

They are actually named SANZAX ( a word pun which phonetically means without axle)






Finally, the rear mech is the usual Cyclo but the rarer 5 speed one

The mount has probably been repaired as the welding is not as clean as all the other details of the frame

 

[Cavalier]

I love all the details. I saw a French tourer recently that had the same brake levers and I thought at the time that the person had just put drop bars on the bike and used the levers from something like a 'Toulouse' bar. But now I see that this is how they are supposed to be.

That's a hell of a drop from outer to inner chainring by the way! And very interesting reading about the tubing manufacturers!

 

[bduc61]

I love all the details. I saw a French tourer recently that had the same brake levers and I thought at the time that the person had just put drop bars on the bike and used the levers from something like a 'Toulouse' bar. But now I see that this is how they are supposed to be.

That's a hell of a drop from outer to inner chainring by the way! And very interesting reading about the tubing manufacturers!

curious to see this french tourer if you have a pic :idea:

else - true about the chainring drop - it is large but actually with only 8 speeds it is understandable they built it this way as the bike was supposed to be able to cope with steep climbs.

So the biggest rear cog being 24 ! you really need that small front chainring :facepalm:

I have done a test of about 60 miles on it with various flats, ups and downs, and the ratios are pretty handy . The tough part for my old bones were the slight uphill portions where the big ring can be a bit demanding.

But I confess that after having tried to test the change of the front chainring with the front derailleur in the garage on a bike stand, I decided to be cautious as it is very very tricky.

First because the front derailleur is not very rigid - so with the gap , its a bit of a challenge.
I feared bending the cage !
And foremost , when you try to change on the road, the lever is actually cumbersome to handle as being behind the seattube.
Remember that these front derailleur actionned with levers were often called in France " suicide derailleur"
You actually have to look at the cage doing that , continue to pedal and forget about the road ! the best recipe for disaster.
So until now I have always changed the chainring manually having dismounted prior

 

[cloonaghpat]

Re:

This is an education :shock: and aerolevers from the 1950s, just amazing, great thread.

Regards,

Pat

 

[firedfromthecircus]

Re: Re:

This is an education :shock: and aerolevers from the 1950s, just amazing, great thread.

Regards,

Pat

I am in complete agreement. Fascinating stuff.

 

[Old Ned]

Re: Re:

This is an education :shock: and aerolevers from the 1950s, just amazing, great thread.

Regards,

Pat

I am in complete agreement. Fascinating stuff.

Me too! I was fascinated by the brake levers, thanks for the explanation. Were they the inspiration for the Shimano etc. versions of the 80's? And the pedals with no axles. Didn't Shimano have a similar design for one of their 'Aero' groupsets?

Super bike all round.

 

[Jamiedyer]

I keep coming back to this as it is. like all your machines, really educational and interesting. Like the others, love it.

Jamie

 

[AndyMart]

You find or build some fantastic bikes, thanks for sharing