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rottenlog

My dad recently gave me this bike. He said he bought it in 1969, but possibly later. I was wondering if it is a Gitane and if it is what kind. It's pretty dirty; I haven't had time to properly clean it up yet. The derailleurs are Simplex and the brakes are Wiennman. It says has a sticker that says "Le Super" and on that sticker it also says "Tour de France". Please help me identify it.

Thanks!

rottenlog

sorry the pictures are blurry

verktyg

Greetings,

I can say with a very high level confidence that your bike is not a Gitane.

I did a quick Google search for Le Super and came up empty. A lot of French bikes included the words Tour de France in the decals.

During the US Bike Boom of the early 1970s the market was flooded with entry level "10 speed racing bikes". They were marketed under dozens of "brand" names.

Anything with 2 wheels and 2 derailleurs sold faster than they could be assembled out of the box! Unfortunately value wise this is one of those bikes.

The Bike Boom started around late 1969, peaked about 1973 and was over in 1974. During that time there were a number of French and Italian bike manufacturers who made bikes like this with private label names (Holland, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Austria, Taiwan, Japan too).

With a little work, this could be made into a fun riding bike for casual use. The grease in the bearings is over 40 years old so all bearings will need to be repacked. The cables should probably be replaced too. This kind of service will cost at least $100-$150 at most bike shops in the US. You may need new tires too.

The most important thing to look at before riding this bike are the brakes. The steel calipers were low end and the rubber brakes pads are probably dried out and hard as a rock.

The brake levers have what were euphemistically called "safety extension levers" which supposedly allowed you to apply the brakes while riding with your hands on top of the bars.

We called them "SUICIDE LEVERS" because the Mickey Mouse design allowed the lever ends to pop out of the levers when they worked loose or were applied hard! There is a screw on each brake lever that holds the levers on. Take them off and throw them away!

The other alternative is to clean up the bike and save it as a keepsake from your dad.

That could be nice as long as a significant other doesn't walk out to the garage one day with a pointing finger saying "Get THAT thing out of here!" - I guess that's why I'm still single! Wink