 |  | | | |  | |  |  | Does my new Rallye tandem have french threads? |  | |  |  | |
 Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 7:42 pm |
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| derosa |
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| Joined: 29 Oct 2009 |
| Posts: 3 |
| Location: Rochester, NY |
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I just purchased a gitane rallye tandem for 150.00 that appears to be all original except for the seats. I've tried to find other examples but can only seem to find later versions. Its a burgundy red paint in nice shape excepting that someone sprayed some white paint near it and it got some overspray. Not noticeable from a distance. Unlike the pics I've been finding it has a straight seat tube under the stoker's seat not curved.
Parts are stronglight cranks with half step gearing, mafac brakes and levers, simplex derailleurs and shifters, and 700c mavic rims. I've not been able to find it in the catalogues on this forum so I'm assuming its from 79-81. Any chance this is english threaded?
Its first ride was a solo to get it home from work which only added 5 minutes to my usual 35 minute ride so it seems reasonably quick and I'm impressed with the overall smoothness. I suspect with the wife on the back as well it will be a bit whippy but nice for the long rides we want to plan.
Right now I have a kuwahara that is too big for either the wife or me but before fully realizing that I had already upgraded it to ultegra octalink cranks, flat bars, 9sp shifters, chains and derailleurs, and a much stronger velocity wheelset. I'd like to stash the old parts off this frame as they are virtually unused and upgrade to the newer stronger stuff if possible. Any chance this will work or will I need to retap the bb shells to italian thread? |
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| Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 7:48 pm |
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| scozim |
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| Joined: 26 Sep 2008 |
| Posts: 629 |
| Location: Ellensburg, WA |
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Congratulations on your purchase. I've seen a lot of Gitane tandems for sale in the past few months.
Do you have photos including some close ups that we can look at?
Scott |
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| | | | | | | | | Re: Does my new Rallye tandem have french threads? | | | | | |
| Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 9:05 pm |
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| verktyg |
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| Joined: 14 Jan 2007 |
| Posts: 2814 |
| Location: SF Bay Area |
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| derosa wrote: |
| Parts are stronglight cranks with half step gearing, mafac brakes and levers, simplex derailleurs and shifters, and 700c mavic rims. I've not been able to find it in the catalogues on this forum so I'm assuming its from 79-81. Any chance this is english threaded? |
Welcome to the Forum, now post pictures!
The 1978 Rallye is listed as being made with 102 steel tubing which was plain carbon steel. The 1984 model list very adequate French components.
Stronglight bottom brackets from that era most likely will have the thread size stamped into the cups: something like 35 x 1 or 1.375 x 24tpi.
It's a 50/50 chance that the headset, stem, bottom bracket and pedals are British size.
Ignore the catalog specs as they are subject to change with every bottle of wine... 
| derosa wrote: |
| Right now I have a kuwahara that is too big for either the wife or me but before fully realizing that I had already upgraded it to ultegra octalink cranks, flat bars, 9sp shifters, chains and derailleurs, and a much stronger velocity wheelset. I'd like to stash the old parts off this frame as they are virtually unused and upgrade to the newer stronger stuff if possible. Any chance this will work or will I need to retap the bb shells to italian thread? |
The rear triangle on the Ralley is probably 120mm wide for a 5 speed freewheel or maybe 126mm for a 6 speed.
Your 9 speed rear hub is probably 130mm wide or maybe even 135mm wide. Spreading the rear triangle 10mm or 15mm can be done but a ham fisted hammer mechanic could easily leave you in a compromising situation with the pooch  if he were to damage one of the dropouts. Also, the dropouts need to be realigned after being spread apart and usually the rear triangle too.
The dropouts need to be equally spaced from the center line of the bike so that the rear wheel sits vertically and horizontally parallel to the plane of the center line. This is far more critical for handling on a tandem plus rear hub and spoke life too! 
The Octilink cranks are going to create much more of a challenge. Retapping the BB to Italian thread is a lot easier said than done. It's the court of last resort!
Every LBS mechanic is an expert! But in reality many of them are ham fisted hammer mechanics! If they're so good, why aren't they working on Porsches for real money? (Many people who have posted here comment that they have a special mechanic with the divine touch and it's better to attack their family pet than the favorite bike mechanic).
It's one thing to have the correct tools to do the job but another to know HOW to use them properly. It's really easy for someone to hose your frame for you while trying to tap BB threads oversize. With a tandem like yours that's 2 opportunities to screw up. It's no fun being out on the road with a spun out BB! What I'm suggesting is to look at all the other options first.
The Octilink has two advantages: sealed bearings and the chainrings are probably ramped and pinned for better shifting.
You may be able to find some ramped and pinned chainrings for the Stronglight 99 cranks. The standard Stronglight chainrings shift very nicely especially with one of the new SRAM PC870 chains. The Simplex front derailleurs work well with triples too!
If you want sealed bearings and the bike has French threads Phil BBs have been used on tandems for years. If it has British threads there's a wide variety of sealed BBs that will work.
Octilink was just another proprietary Shimano marketing ploy. It was never an improvement over the square dive BB system. The first generation Octilink had a high failure rate among hammerheads! End of rant.
Good luck, and try the bike with the existing equipment for a while.
Chas, resident retrogrouch  |
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| | | | | | | | | Re: Does my new Rallye tandem have french threads? | | | | | |
| Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 5:29 am |
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| derosa |
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| Joined: 29 Oct 2009 |
| Posts: 3 |
| Location: Rochester, NY |
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| verktyg wrote: |
Every LBS mechanic is an expert! But in reality many of them are ham fisted hammer mechanics! If they're so good, why aren't they working on Porsches for real money? (Many people who have posted here comment that they have a special mechanic with the divine touch and it's better to attack their family pet than the favorite bike mechanic).
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I am one of the local mechanics, I just wanted make sure of the BB before over torquing it one direction before finding out it was the other. In 10 years of wrenching I've yet to run into a french thread bike. The bb didn't have the size on the outside. Some online searching showed that french is close to italian in size so I pulled the non-drive and tried an english cup, it is english thread.
As more me I would never be a porshe mechanic, have you ever tried working on a car here in the rust belt? I have a 79 volvo 262c from GA I'm restoring and doing all 4 brakes on it took the same amount of time as doing the calipers on my wifes 98 v70 which has lived in NY. Even worse they're freezing cold to work on in the winter and burning hot to work on for oil changes. Not worth the poor pay IMHO. Not taking it personal but just letting you know I'm potentially one of the people you are bashing. Considering two of the mechanics I work with I'm not suprised to hear the words but not all of us are that bad. |
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| | | | | | | | | Cynical Chas. | | | | | |
| Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2009 4:59 pm |
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| verktyg |
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| Joined: 14 Jan 2007 |
| Posts: 2814 |
| Location: SF Bay Area |
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Sorry for the bashing... Just being a retro-grouch (with foot in mouth disease)!
Frequently I've found many of the current generation bike mechanics are also hammerhead racers with more opinion than knowledge or experience (back in the day too). 
I worked on bulldozers, cars (including a Porsche dealer) and trucks before switching to bicycles. The fellow who owned the shop where I worked in the 70s asked me one day when I was in shopping, how much I made working on trucks. I told him and he said he'd pay me that much to work on bikes instead. It was a no brainer. I can appreciate the pleasure derived out of working on bikes rather than Porsches. 
I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA and worked on cars for several years there too. Old worn out car parts consisted of: 1 part salt, 1 part rust and 1 part steel! We used the "fire wrench" a lot!
Glad the BB situation worked out for you. One suggestion, you've probably already done this, but make sure that the British adjustable cup screws smoothly all the way into the BB. British and ISO threads are smaller diameter than the 35mm French threads and the pitch is close enough to go about 1/2 -2/3 of the way in before binding up.
I've had to fix a lot of these kinds of things that someone else hosed, that's why I'm so cynical. Last week I started working on an all original 1965 Swiss bike.
Among the things that were kludged but hidden, somehow the right Campy shift lever had broken off and someone reattached it with epoxy glue. Was I surprised to see it fall off while I was adjusting the rear derailleur!!!
Another suggestion, The chain stays on the Rallye are probably made of some fairly thick walled tubing. When you spread them to 130mm or 135mm try using a Park FFS fork and frame straightening tool or something similar rather than just trying to spread the dropouts.
We installed a number of Phil Wood disc brake hubs on older Gitane tandems. The older Gitane tandems had an extra set of mixte style stays attached to the dropouts, they were a bear to spread. It's important to realign the dropouts too after spreading them to avoid uneven stress on the rear axle bearings (you probably know to do that too).
"In 10 years of wrenching I've yet to run into a French thread bike." That's not uncommon these days. Most French treaded bikes have left the country and returned to the US as Kias, Hyndais or Hondas!
Back in the 70s at least 3/4 of the bikes we sold or worked on had French threads. Same thing with at least half of my collection. There was a time in the late 70s however when it was hard to tell what threads a French bike had. Pujoe made a few entry level U0-8 bikes with British BBs and pedals, maybe even a few with Swiss LH metric fixed cups. Most Motobecanes that I saw had standard French BBs but a few had Swiss LH fixed cups. I have a pair of identical 1984 Moto Grand Jubile bikes. One has a Swiss BB the other French.
There are a few shops that I've visited that deal in high end bikes and the "wrenches" that work there seem quite knowledgeable. I just got back into cycling about 3 1/2 years ago. I remember going into multiple shops in the past few years looking for small replacement parts that used to be common and getting blank stares... 
At the other extreme, there's one high end shop in an exclusive neighborhood that pushes a lot of Tandems. They used to do a decent mail order business and were great to deal with in person.
The last few times I've been in there I had to deal with "don't bother me, I'm soon to be a Cat 1 racer, you fat old man" employee attitudes. Well they can kiss my.....
One afternoon the TruVative BB on my riding buddy's Lemond came loose. We were close to that shop. He just wanted to get it tightened up so he could get back home and NO! we weren't going to leave it or bring it back!
It took 3 "mechanics" to try to figure out how to tighten up a common component! DOH! It looked like a bunch of monkeys having a go at a football! Their arrogant attitude never changed either!
So excuse me for tarring everyone with the same brush and have fun with your tandem. We always had one or two tandems at our shop and took them out for occasional weekend rides.
Chas. fat old man |
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