gitaneusa.com :: View topic - Anyone know Combisa hubs and Inaubi Skewers (SPanish)?

Chaironea

Hi everybody,

I am new to this forum and have been searching the web for quite a while for anybody else having low flange hubs made by a company named "Combisa" and additionally labeled "Made in Spain". As they came with a 1979 Gitane I thought maybe anyone here has heard of the maker.

Here is what they look like (still with some polish on them from the time when I buffed the parts up some one and a half year ago after buying the bike):
www.uebersetzungsbuero-jansen.de/Combisa.jpg

The only other owner I have found so far has just got one front hub of them in a Romet Sport (http://velospace.org/node/4932). The skewers in my hubs are labeled "Inaubi", and there is no single find on the whole web. The name also does not seem to be some Spanish word.

I really like these hube and ride the bike a lot for training which sometimes feels strange because the hubs are so evidently rare. But bikes are - as i feel - meant for riding and this one really has had a life which has left next to nothing on the paint around the right hand shifter and given it lots of scratches. And the hubs would be as useless lying around in some box as they will be on the day when the bearing cups are worn.

I have a pretty knowledgable bike shop owner in my vicinity who is also a collector and restaurator of old bikes. He never heard of these, but his guess was that it was one of those many Spanish companies from the Franco Time that just vanished after that period because they could no longer go on producing stuff that was patented in other countries.

So, although my guess was that Europe is rather the place to look for this stuff (Combisa and also Inaubi), I have not found a clue on these parts in fora, on bike parts fairs or in shops.

Anybody of you who has ever heard of these?

Thanks and Regards,

Christoph

sandranian · Site Admin

Welcome to the forum!

Haven't heard of Combisa, but I would imagine that you are probably right about them. It appears from a quick websearch that Combisa is a manufacturing company in Spain, that makes a whole host of products. They apparently at one time, made bicycle components...and might still today, but I don't speak spanish!
http://www.combisa.net

Sorry I don't have more info for you...

Chaironea

Hi sandranian,

I have found that address as well but could not make much of it. According to them, Combisa has been founded in 1982 but might as well be the successor of the original company after the transition from Franco Spain to modern day Spain as a constitutional monarchy. This transition ended in 1982.

The bike has more of these strange/rare components, e.g. Notario pedals and Paturaud toe clips, but then again a mainstream Arius Gran Carrera saddle. Looks like it has just been fitted with what was in stock at that time, as is often the case with Gitanes of that era.