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mstromni

Hey All,
New owner of a vintage Gitane here. I paid $200 US, found it on craigslist! Does anyone want to help me ID what model it is? It's got a serial number, I can sort of make it out.

Anyway, anything I tell you won't help much - on to the photos! It's a great bike, I'm just getting into cycling (my first road bike) and have done a couple 10-15 mile rides - the only thing I've done is wrap the handlebars and remove the front derailur (it didn't fit right, and would occasioanlly hop off the large chainring)

mstromni

I just noticed that "bike modesty" bike is almost exactly the same!

vanhelmont

Welcome to the forum.

I think you have a mid to late 70s Interclub (have you looked at the catalogue section of this site?). They had the honeycomb dropouts like your bike. Here's a picture, note the chrome fork but no chromed stays.
http://www.gitaneusa.com/images/catalog/1976_pg6.jpg
It has seen a lot of use, and some parts changes. The derailleurs, cranks, and saddle are all non-original.

The frame tubes are metric, so the seat tube is a little smaller than non-metric bikes (all British, American, and Japanese bikes, and all bikes, I think, by the mid 80s.) That's probably why you had trouble with the front derailleur. You could probably shim it, or better yet find a metric-size derailleur.

This bike may have come with a leather saddle, like the bike in the picture. I bought a bike in 1976 with a saddle that looked just like this, and swapped it for a leather Brooks saddle. When I would sweat, the platic saddle didn't let the moisture escape and I got "diaper rash." Although the Brooks felt harder it would breath, and let the moisture out. Also after a while it gets to fit you, and most people find them more comfortable than other saddles.

Since your bike seems to have been in use, the bearings may have been greased recently, but one of the joys of older bikes is that once a year or so you should clean and grease the wheel bearings, bottom bracket and headset.

Enjoy!

Dave[/url]

verktyg

I agree with Dave. I think that it might be a 1977 Interclub model. Some of these came with the 3 main tubes made of Reynolds 531 tubing.

Whenever I see dropouts painted a different color than the rest of the frame I immediately suspect that some repairs were done to the frame.

The degree to which these were painted however leads me to think that someone "customized" the frame.

The derailleurs and cranks are from the 80s while the seat, bar and stem are from the early 70s. The wheels???

This is probably a bike that's been pieced together (most of my bikes are pieced together).

A lot of Japanese front derailleurs were made to fit a 1 1/8" seat tube only. You can either shim them or in some cases file down the clamp so that they will fit tight on a 28mm metric seat tube.

Also, you need to add a link or two to the chain. It looks too short.

Good luck,

Chas.