gitaneusa.com Forum Index » Vintage Gitane » Info wanted and some HQ Gitane porn    View previous topic :: View next topic  Info wanted and some HQ Gitane porn   Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 8:35 am trucker_dan Joined: 08 Jan 2011 Posts: 2 Location: Greenville, SC I found this gitane locally on craigs list for quite a good deal with the intention of flipping it or keeping the groupset and selling the frame. Too bad its a 54 c to c with a 56 top tube and I need a 60-62. I can't seem to figure out what model it is. Its all dura ace ex and most of the parts have date codes from late 1980. It has vitus dropouts and bb shell. 531 frame tubes and fork blades. Only one bottle cage and a clamp on front derailer. Its seems to be all period correct except for the wheels and saddle. It doesn't seem to have any indication of ever having a model decal on the top tube. No number plate but nice internal cable routing. Its really in amazing shape, probably less than 1000 miles. The owner claimed it was purchased in germany and imported to the usa. I uploaded a ton of hq pic on my photobucket. http://s72.photobucket.com/albums/i182/ditrydan/ebay/ Any info would be great. I figured you guys would like some good pics for once. Thanks. Mystery 1980s Gitane   Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 2:41 pm verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area Greetings and welcome to the Forum. Interesting bike. Looks like a 1984 model. Gitane only used those style decals in 1984 (maybe late 1983 to early 1985 ???) plus the 1987 catalog shows them on the 1987 Team Pro model; but being Gitane, who knows? http://www.gitaneusa.com/images/catalog/1987_pg2.jpg Several possibilities: Could be a European model bike. The 1984 British catalog shows a similar bike, the Vuelta S 2944 with the next level down Shimano 600EX components. http://www.gitaneusa.com/images/catalog/1984/british/1984-British-catalogue0002.jpg or, It could have been built up from a bare frame with all of the Shimano and other components added by a bike shop or previous owner. Trek was involved with marketing Gitanes in the US during the mid 80s and lots of strange things went on. Several interesting points, Gitane used Super Vitus 983 tubing on the 1984 Super Corsa bikes. Yours is made of Reynolds 531. The 1984 Super Corsa also had a full sloping fork crown. Yours has a semi-sloping crown like on the Criterium model bikes. Lastly, your bike has one of the Phillipe forged stems. I've never seen one of these on a Gitane, mostly Peugeots and Motobecanes. I've always liked these stems and though that they were more elegant than Cinelli and 3TTT stems. While I'm no DuraAce expert, I always thought that the EX series came out in the mid 80s which would make it period correct for this bike. If the late 80s Shimano dates are correct, that plus the Phillipe stem would suggest to me that it was built up from a bare frame at a later time. _________________ Chas. SF Bay Area, CA USA ============== 1984 Criterium 1969 TdF 1971 TdF 1974 TdF 1984 TdF x 2 Bikes 1970 SC 1971 SC 1972 SC 1984 SC 1984 Team Pro 1985 Professional 1990s Team Replica   Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 4:36 pm lofter Joined: 05 Mar 2006 Posts: 1162 400 is a good price Re: Info wanted and some HQ Gitane porn   Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 6:19 pm verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area trucker_dan wrote: The owner claimed it was purchased in germany and imported to the usa. I didn't catch that part on the first read. I was sort of thinking Switzerland because I've seen some different models come out of there. PM me with a price if you want to sell it... _________________ Chas. SF Bay Area, CA USA ============== 1984 Criterium 1969 TdF 1971 TdF 1974 TdF 1984 TdF x 2 Bikes 1970 SC 1971 SC 1972 SC 1984 SC 1984 Team Pro 1985 Professional 1990s Team Replica   Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2011 7:53 pm trois tubes Joined: 16 Apr 2010 Posts: 136 The date of the components don't seem to match the frame in it's present state. The Reynolds tubing decal style looks out of sync as well. The frame could be a 1982 Olympic that was repainted later to match the current color scheme and graphics at the time or... as Verktyg stated, the frame was built with older parts. The stem was very popular on most french racing bikes during the late 70's. One thing is certain, it's a high-end frame that was well kept at a good price - enjoy it !!! Re: Mystery 1980s Gitane   Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 7:40 pm logarto Joined: 18 Feb 2008 Posts: 56 verktyg wrote: Greetings and welcome to the Forum. While I'm no DuraAce expert, I always thought that the EX series came out in the mid 80s which would make it period correct for this bike. If the late 80s Shimano dates are correct, that plus the Phillipe stem would suggest to me that it was built up from a bare frame at a later time. This version of Dura Ace EX with the Dyna Drive Crank and pedals would have been 80 or 81-84. Shimano gave up on that crank as they introduced 6 speed indexing in late 1984. These distinctive brakes are the Second Generation Dura Ace and they go back to 77 or 78. I'd bet my house on that because I couldn't afford them at the time and the "Aero" fad was still a long ways off. Shimano still didn't have an infinitely variable cam, just an open shut QR arrangement. The rear derraileur in this picture almost looks medium cage like the original Shimano "Crane." The Dura Ace Rear Der came along about the same time as these brake calipers with triangle reinforcement and it could barely handle a 23 tooth cog. It was nearly as tiny as the Superbe. Perhaps someone changed it out for that reason- that sure looks like a 26 or 28 tooth cog on there? Perhaps there WAS a medium cage pre-indexing Dura Ace that I've never heard of too but I kinda doubt it. Those shifters, front der. and headset look right for the Dura Ace EX as well. Shimano gave up on the scalloped headset nuts with 7400 Dura Ace just like the crank. It's a revelation to me that there were stock Shimano equipped Gitanes anywhere during this era. Trek certainly didn't get any of these. Does anyone recognize that seatpost? I concur that I only saw the bulbous decals on 1984 frames. My recollection is that if you were building a Dura Ace bike in that year this stuff is what was available; so in my opinion this is indeed the right group for the assumed 1984 Gitane frame year. It's the right dropouts too, the tubing decal's in the right place too but it says Reynolds and not Vitus? Everything Dura Ace changed the following winter (except for the seatpost and the stem) with the 7400 groupo which is finally becoming very collectable today. It was made to hold up as well as Nuovo Record and by 1987 that was no longer necessary and Shimano naturally stopped doing it. (Nuovo/Super Record was gone and C-Record cost a lot more.) I left the business in the summer of 89 and team mechanics were already telling me about 7401 BBs and Headsets not lasting a half season by then. In my experience with the 83 and 84 Trek-Gitanes I only saw the Aero-style Phillipe "Atax" stem, not this one. As far as Reynolds tubing Gitanes through Trek there were just the garish 1985 531C Professionels which were sold with Campy Victory although we only handled them as bare frames. If you search under my name I've posted pictures of a 50 cm sample of that frame. They came with a number tag and finally a second water bottle braze on, Reynolds decal on the down tube above the shifters and Vitus dropouts. If this was in fact a stock bike anywhere then I'm leaning towards the Swiss/German theory too, especially with those gears. Judging by what Cilo sold us in a full Dura Ace 7400 Vitus 979 Aluminum a year or two later on they were possibly appreciating the Dura Ace stuff there a few years ahead of France or Italy. We made a margin selling them for less than $1000 and there were plenty available. Re: Mystery 1980s Gitane   Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 10:31 pm verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area logarto wrote: verktyg wrote: While I'm no DuraAce expert, I always thought that the EX series came out in the mid 80s which would make it period correct for this bike. If the late 80s Shimano dates are correct, that plus the Phillipe stem would suggest to me that it was built up from a bare frame at a later time. This version of Dura Ace EX with the Dyna Drive Crank and pedals would have been 80 or 81-84. Shimano gave up on that crank as they introduced 6 speed indexing in late 1984. These distinctive brakes are the Second Generation Dura Ace and they go back to 77 or 78. I'd bet my house on that because I couldn't afford them at the time and the "Aero" fad was still a long ways off. GREAT STUFF! I was away from road bikes during the AERO fiasco era but it reminded me of the faddist raceurs who shave their legs because they thought that it made them more aerodynamic! In reality, at the speeds that bikes run at, it was found that leg hair helps reduce drag! Pros shaved their legs for two reasons. First they get frequent massages and second it's easier to remove "plasters" (bandages) when they get road rash! I never cared much for DuraAce beyond the first generation components. The early DA brakes and hubs, especially in black were really "cool"! I have a set of wheels with black DA hubs. logarto wrote: The rear derraileur in this picture almost looks medium cage like the original Shimano "Crane." The Dura Ace Rear Der came along about the same time as these brake calipers with triangle reinforcement and it could barely handle a 23 tooth cog. It was nearly as tiny as the Superbe. Perhaps someone changed it out for that reason- that sure looks like a 26 or 28 tooth cog on there? Perhaps there WAS a medium cage pre-indexing Dura Ace that I've never heard of too but I kinda doubt it. The Shimano Crane rear derailleurs were beautiful. I have a standard length one on my 83 Colnago (with Stronglight 105bis cranks - it's a Campy free zone). The Crane handles a 13-28 freewheel with 50-38 chainrings like silk. They were so much more elegant looking than a stodgy Campy NR! I also have a NIB NOS long arm Crane that's going to stay that way - eye candy. logarto wrote: It's a revelation to me that there were stock Shimano equipped Gitanes anywhere during this era. Trek certainly didn't get any of these. Does anyone recognize that seatpost? I seem to remember that Lemond may have ridden a Shimano equipped Gitane at one point??? Either that or some Gitane Team bikes were DuraAce equipped for a short period??? I've seen a few DuraAce equipped 1984 Gitane "Team" bikes on eBay that came out of Switzerland. They all had Reynolds tubing. Germany would probably follow suite with Switzerland. The seatpost is a Stronglight. logarto wrote: In my experience with the 83 and 84 Trek-Gitanes I only saw the Aero-style Phillipe "Atax" stem, not this one. As far as Reynolds tubing Gitanes through Trek there were just the garish 1985 531C Professionels which were sold with Campy Victory although we only handled them as bare frames. If you search under my name I've posted pictures of a 50 cm sample of that frame. They came with a number tag and finally a second water bottle braze on, Reynolds decal on the down tube above the shifters and Vitus dropouts. I have a 50cm 1985 Gitane Professional that I rescued off of eBay. It's all original except for the wheels and saddle, compete with Campy Victory components and as you say "garish" decals. It's a pretty decent riding bike and doesn't handle like a wheel barrow. The forged Phillipe stems like this one came with black inset Phillipe, Peugeot or Motobecane labels. All of the higher end Gitanes that I've seen have as you say the Phillipe ATAX Aero stem. logarto wrote: If this was in fact a stock bike anywhere then I'm leaning towards the Swiss/German theory too, especially with those gears. I strongly suspect that it was assembled from a bare frame. Probably a European only model. _________________ Chas. SF Bay Area, CA USA ============== 1984 Criterium 1969 TdF 1971 TdF 1974 TdF 1984 TdF x 2 Bikes 1970 SC 1971 SC 1972 SC 1984 SC 1984 Team Pro 1985 Professional 1990s Team Replica   Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:53 pm logarto Joined: 18 Feb 2008 Posts: 56 This is going to sound like BS but.......... I was riding my mostly Superbe Olmo on a back road in Maine probably in 1980 or 81. I stopped to relieve myself and in the process took a good long look at the original Superbe Rear Der, (I still own that frame and changer, thank you very much.) It occurred to me that the ultimate racing rear derraileur would have a slant paralellogram like SunTour but a sprung upper pivot like Shimano/Simplex. (I barely knew the Simplex from a hole in the ground at the time, these are of course the same Simplex parts that are hugely overvalued today.) Turns out that Shimano had made the same evaluation and they were waiting for SunTour's Patent on the Slant Paralellogram to expire. All (modern) indexed shifting comes from this tiny refinement. All previous designs needed a non linear amount of cable pull as you moved up the freewheel. Campy TRIED to index this way for a year or two after the horse was out of the barn but it never really worked. Whoever wrote the Wikipedia article about Shimano understands all this stuff very well. Shimano started out by trying to intruduce stuff like casette freehubs and indexed shifting at the low end but they ultimately prevailed over Campy and SunTour by introducing it at the top and then later on downwards into the medium priced groupos. IMO there was very little Dura Ace EX being sold in 83-84, probably less than SunTour Superbe even. The only way we got it was by tearing down Team Miyatas. The second generation Shimano 600 came out in 1983; it was pre-indexing of course and touted as "CAD/CAM design" but in just about every respect it was an absolute game changer for the mid-priced road groupos. "Sealed" but not cartridge bearings, a cold forged crank where the previous 600 had been swedged and a very solid front derr that did everything from 52-42 to the 50-45-26 rig that I toured with. The stuff was a little heavy but it worked very well and you could get it on a $600 bike at full retail. Campy's response was to start designing Victory and Triomphe. By the time that Shimano made the 600/Ultegra level parts indexing (1986?) it was all over. Campy really didn't know what had hit them. Ditto for Galli, Zeus, Gipiemme etc. (I'll stipulate that the French really didn't care, being French of course? I had had a Peugeot car where EVERYTHING was in the opposite location of where you expected to find it.) I've always felt that Campagnolo's Houston-based location at the time contributed to how they got so thoroughly blindsided by Shimano. The total volume of professional road stuff being sold in North America increased dramatically in 1985 and Campy's people probably thought that they were still getting their historical dominant NA market share that spring. They could have easily been up by 15-25 percent? With apologies to Mr. Romic, Houston has really never been much of a biking town; Campy at the time was a great sporting goods franchise just like Smith and Wesson. They paid John Howard to be their figurehead and watched the money pour in come springtime and that was that. But Shimano was already very much eating their lunch with indexed shifting and the 7400 Dura Ace Group that same year (1985.) They had concentrated on the four things that you touch while riding the bike, the sidepulls were a huge leap forward as was the profiled cage front derraileur. Another goofy refinement was that you didn't have to unhook the brake cable to get an allen wrench into the brake lever fixing bolt to straighten it. While conventional once again at the pedals and compatible to Nuovo Record at the bottom bracket, the 7400 crank was lighter and stiffer than anything else out there, period. Stylistically nothing was milled or fluted. I still haven't even warped the one that I bought that year; it still sports the original 53 tooth chainring too. Between this here Dura Ace EX stuff and Dura Ace 7400 I would honestly estimate that Shimano's road gruopo sales volume increased 300 percent from the one season to the next. Maybe even more than that. If Campy North America had been based in California or even New Jersey like they had been before Houston in the 1970s, then they might have seen this all coming just a little better? Volume wise they have been playing catch-up ever since. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I probably sold more than 200 pro bikes that year, enough to keep two mechanics fully occupied. By April '85 people were just BEGGING you to cross-sell them from Super Record to Dura-Ace 7400 on a custom bike build. I learned to guage the level of conviction when they told me which parts they wanted on the frame, it just took a tiny little crack in the door to get them switched over to Dura-Ace.   Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 4:50 pm trucker_dan Joined: 08 Jan 2011 Posts: 2 Location: Greenville, SC Great info. Now to clear some things up. I paid a lot less than $400. The dura ace stuff is late 1980 not 80s. I found a build on the crank of aug, 1980 and the brakes were july 1980. The seat post and headset are matching dura ace 7200. The wheels don't match the vintage of the bike. I suspect it had some matching dura ace sewups that were tossed for clinchers around 1990. This happens way to often with nice vintage bikes. The cassette is a 26 tooth. I don't know how well it works, the bike is way to small for me. I doesn't appear to be a repaint. I was wondering about the swiss team thing but my bike has a clamp on front derailer and I think most the team bikes had braze ons. The frame is very well built with the dropouts and internal cable routing. I thought perhaps it was vitus tubing and someone put stickers on later but you can see reynolds stamped into the fork tube in one of the pictures. Thanks for the info I will try to answer any more questions. Daniel Jones Info wanted and some HQ Gitane porn     gitaneusa.com Forum Index » Vintage Gitane You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum All times are GMT - 8 Hours   Page 1 of 1   All Posts1 Day7 Days2 Weeks1 Month3 Months6 Months1 Year Oldest FirstNewest First  Select a forum Gitane USA----------------Vintage GitaneGitane RacingModern GitanePro Racing - Classics/Giro/Tour....Owner Gallery   Powered by phpBB © 2001-2004 phpBB Group Designed for Trushkin.net | Themes Database.