gitaneusa.com Forum Index » Vintage Gitane » a alan/gitane olympic record from 1976 Goto page 1, 2  Next    View previous topic :: View next topic  a alan/gitane olympic record from 1976   Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 2:05 am fanculito Joined: 08 Sep 2011 Posts: 2 first of all, I'm new here, so hello everybody. a friend told me about this forum and told me you could probably give me infos about my bike. if not, just enjoy the pictures. I bought this Alan as it is, just the back wheel hub was changed. it is all built up in campa nuevo record. rear derailleur says pat.76, so I guess it's from those years. any idea? thanks.   Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 11:11 pm Wisey Joined: 19 May 2009 Posts: 631 Location: Brisbane, Australia Cool, another gitane with multiple personality disorder. Sorry, I can't tell you anything about the bike except that it really isn't unusual to see odd things badged as gitanes. Besides those old Alans and Vitus are very cool bikes. I can tell you this. (a) It looks very cool. (b) It should ride super smooth. But I guess you already knew that. _________________ Kind Regards, Wisey Delta Dreamin' Alan Frames   Posted: Sat Sep 10, 2011 1:51 am verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area Alan is an Italian company that started making bonded aluminum frames back in the early 70s. A lot of French and Italian bike makers used Alan aluminum frames and applied their decals to them like your Gitane Record. This one is probably an Alan Competitzione model with Gitane decals. Here's some pictures of one with Alan decals. http://tinyurl.com/3qgvfuz These Alan frames were called "screwed and glued" because the tubes were coated with an aerospace adhesive and screwed into the lugs rather than being welded together. http://www.classicrendezvous.com/Italy/alan.htm A lot of the frames had colored anodized tubes with polished aluminum lugs, forks and joints. In the mid 80s or there abouts Alan started using carbon fiber reinforced plastic composite for the 3 main tubes. Alan is still in business making carbon fiber bikes. http://www.alanbike.net/website2012/index.php/list-all-categories/since-1972 Alan frames were a favorite among many cyclocross riders so they are plenty sturdy but one thing to watch for with these kinds of frames is cracks in the tubes and tubes loosening in the lugs. Most folks who own these frames love them. In the late 70s, the French tubing company Ateliers de la Rive, the makers of Durifort, Vitus and Super Vitus steel tubing started making aluminum frames similar to Alan frames under the Vitus brand name. They eventually got out of the steel tubing business and focused on glued aluminum frames and later, lugged and glued carbon fiber frames. They also sold their frames to the larger bike makers who put their decals on the Vitus frames just like the Alan frames. Last edited by verktyg on Sun Oct 09, 2011 7:27 pm; edited 1 time in total _________________ 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: Sat Sep 10, 2011 4:27 am fanculito Joined: 08 Sep 2011 Posts: 2 hehe, thank you for all the specifications. cheers F. Re: Alan Frames   Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 2:16 pm logarto Joined: 18 Feb 2008 Posts: 56 verktyg wrote: In the late 70s, the French tubing company Ateliers de la Rive, the makers of Durifort, Vitus and Super Vitus steel tubing started making aluminum frames similar to Alan frames under the Vitus brand name. They eventually got out of the steel tubing business and focused on glued and screwed aluminum frames and later, carbon fiber frames. They also sold their frames to the larger bike makers who put their decals on the Vitus frames just like the Alan frames. One minor correction. My understanding is that all the Vitus aluminum and carbon products were a slide fit at the "lugs." Alan was the only company that ever threaded the frames together. I can still remember Othon Oschner III telling me that these (Alans) were the best bikes in the world when we took them on for a season or two. The stories I heard from someone who got the full factory tour when Look started gluing their own frames together around 1987 or so would probably curl your hair. Last to arrive at this first generation bonded aluminum party would have been the SR Prism, coming along even after the Trek Aluminum and using rivets in the fork crown to blade junction. I ended up with this Prism fork on two of my bikes both very exotic Centurions; the Facet after replacement and the Ironman Carbon. I think it would be safe to say that the most common OEM version of the Alan back then would have been the Guerciotti cross frames. Three decades later it's hard to overstate how much easier it was to prep one of these frames as compared to a production Colnago or Rossin from that era. They were perfect frame products for a volume pro bike business. We used to joke about having a 24-7 Vitus vending machine out in front where you would key in "56 Cm" and then which color you wanted and it would just come sliding along on a hook. I actually would spit on the plastic cups of a Stronglight Delrin Headset and then press them right in with the heels of my hand. Re: Alan Frames   Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2011 7:39 pm verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area logarto wrote: verktyg wrote: In the late 70s, the French tubing company Ateliers de la Rive, the makers of Durifort, Vitus and Super Vitus steel tubing started making aluminum frames similar to Alan frames under the Vitus brand name. One minor correction. My understanding is that all the Vitus aluminum and carbon products were a slide fit at the "lugs." Alan was the only company that ever threaded the frames together. Not wanting to sound like a contrarian, but I'm not sure that Alan was the "only" maker to use "glued and screwed" frame construction??? The technology was developed for the aerospace industry and also used in some high tech building construction (think geodesic domes). Vitus frames were "similar" to Alan frames in the sense that aluminum tubes were "secured" into the lugs with "aerospace adhesives". I've seen inferences on the web that Vitus frames were glued and screwed too, but I don't know so I modified what I said in my first message. Bike frames made with aluminum tubes date all the way back to the 1890s. Caminargent was a French maker from the 30s through the 50s that used octagonal tubes clamped into cast aluminum lugs with special bolts. Other frame builders used pins or other methods to secure the aluminum tubes into lugs. I've even seen pictures of old aluminum frames that were screwed together and clamped. http://www.blackbirdsf.org/caminade/similar.html Brazing alloys used to connect aluminum have to have very low melting temperatures since the melting point of aluminum is ~1000° F. Those alloys are very low strength, that's why you don't see brazed lugged aluminum frames. In the early 70s there was a lot of work done on adhesive technology especially for the aerospace industries. The Exxon Graftek frames were some of the early users of this technology. The frame tubes were made of aluminum mandrels wrapped with graphite carbon fiber held together with epoxy. The tubes were glued into stainless steel lugs. In the picture of the seat lug below, you can see the aluminum mandrel. The original forks were chrome plated Reynolds 531 before they started supplying the same fork wrapped with carbon fiber. We sold a few of these Graftek frames. They suffered from lack of availability in the sales end plus there were a number of cases of adhesive failure at the lugged joints. The failure rate probably resulted in Exxon dropping the project. We maybe sold or at least looked at 1 or 2 of the early Alan and Vitus frames. I remember road testing one of them and it felt really whippy. There was always the question of adhesive reliability back then too (the Exxon Graftek experience). Both Alan and Vitus brought out improved models over the years so they must have solved the early problems. In the late 70s we were also getting in Klein and Cannondale welded aluminum frames at our shop. That was about the time I was getting out of the bike industry and didn't have much interest in all the latest "zoomy" bikes. In the mid 80s Raleigh brought out their line of Technium glued together frames. They offered both aluminum frames with steel lugs and later Reynolds 753 tubes glued into cast aluminum lugs. They DID have a lot of problems with adhesive failures on those frames. Several weeks ago I was on a classic ride and one of the guys had an Alan cyclocross framed bike complete with cantilever brakes. He said that it rode very well and wasn't whippy at all. One closing word of advice for all of the glued together frames, periodically check for any signs of tube or lug cracking or adhesive failure such as a tube starting to pull out of a lug. At the first sign that the ride starts for feel "funny" or different like becoming more flexible check out the frame. If it's starting to fail, stop riding it! The Raleigh Technium glued frames had a lot of problems with adhesive failure. The adhesives used to assemble these bikes were never tested to last for 25 to 30+ years! Last edited by verktyg on Sun Oct 09, 2011 7:31 pm; edited 3 times in total _________________ 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: Mon Oct 03, 2011 8:47 pm Wisey Joined: 19 May 2009 Posts: 631 Location: Brisbane, Australia Whippy frames: I read a quote supposedly from Andy Hampsten who said of the early glued Look frames that "the only thing more scary than descending on one, was climbing without one". _________________ Kind Regards, Wisey Delta Dreamin'   Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 10:04 am scozim Joined: 26 Sep 2008 Posts: 629 Location: Ellensburg, WA Those bonded aluminum frames can be great. My dad is still riding a Vitus 979 that he purchased in the mid-80's. Light and quick and he rides it more now than his 1991 titanium ride. _________________ 1984 Gitane Sprint 1984 Gitane Tour de France mid-1970's Gitane Olympic Plus many more http://eburgcycling.blogspot.com   Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 11:32 am verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area Wisey wrote: Whippy frames: I read a quote supposedly from Andy Hampsten who said of the early glued Look frames that "the only thing more scary than descending on one, was climbing without one". The whippiest frame I ever rode was a 22" Teledyne Titan titanium frame. We sold some Teledyne frames in the mid 70s. We were only able to get a few of them and they were in 21" and 23" sizes. Our shop owner had a 23" Titan for a while. I rode it a few times and was enamored with the technology but it was a little too big for me. One afternoon a well dressed gentleman walked into out shop carrying a 22" Teledyne Titan frame, just my size! I paid him what he was asking for it and started throwing a Campy gruppo on it before he was out the door! I finished it in time to ride the bike home from work that afternoon. I was a bit of a hard sprinter back then. The rear triangles on those bikes were very rigid. The front end across the head tube and bars on that 22" was so latterly flexible that I could move the bars 1" side to side on the slightest hill or sprint! The next morning I rode it back to the shop, put a price tag on it and hung it up for sale! Recently doing some research on Teledyne Titans, I discovered that the 22" frames were built slightly different in the front end than the 21" and 23" sizes! _________________ 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 Oct 04, 2011 11:37 am verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area scozim wrote: Those bonded aluminum frames can be great. My dad is still riding a Vitus 979 that he purchased in the mid-80's. Light and quick and he rides it more now than his 1991 titanium ride. The early glued aluminum frame that I road tested in the mid to late 70s was extremely whippy. I don't remember if it was an Alan or a Vitus. The Klein and Cannondale welded aluminum frames that we started selling in the late 70s had oversize tubes and were uncomfortably stiff and harsh riding! Last edited by verktyg on Tue Oct 04, 2011 9:54 pm; edited 1 time in total _________________ 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 Oct 04, 2011 2:02 pm scozim Joined: 26 Sep 2008 Posts: 629 Location: Ellensburg, WA verktyg wrote: The whippiest frame I ever rode was a 22" Teledyne Titan titanium frame. You mean like this. I don't plan on riding it. The Vitus 979, Alan framed Gitane, etc. are "grail" bikes I keep my eyes open for. Hopefully I'll end up with my dad's when he's done riding it. I had read the taller 979 frames were indeed whippy but since I ride 52-54 cm frames I don't know that it would be as noticeable - and I tend to ride pretty hard. Heck, those aluminum framed road bikes won a lot of races in the peloton. _________________ 1984 Gitane Sprint 1984 Gitane Tour de France mid-1970's Gitane Olympic Plus many more http://eburgcycling.blogspot.com   Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 2:08 pm Wisey Joined: 19 May 2009 Posts: 631 Location: Brisbane, Australia It's funny, we talk about them being too flexible, but Kelly won a lot of sprints on those frames and he punched out more watts than most of us combined!! _________________ Kind Regards, Wisey Delta Dreamin'   Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 9:50 pm verktyg Joined: 14 Jan 2007 Posts: 2814 Location: SF Bay Area scozim wrote: verktyg wrote: The whippiest frame I ever rode was a 22" Teledyne Titan titanium frame. You mean like this. I don't plan on riding it. Scott, That's a 23" Teledyne. The 23" along with the 21" frames were acceptably rigid across the head tube top tube axis. For some reason the 22" frames were made a little differently and were very flexible up front (don't ask me to dig up my research but after years of making the claim, I did find the evidence a while back in the literature to back up my experiences). ZOOMIE Bikes! BAH!!! _________________ 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: Wed Oct 05, 2011 8:27 am logarto Joined: 18 Feb 2008 Posts: 56 scozim wrote: I had read the taller 979 frames were indeed whippy but since I ride 52-54 cm frames I don't know that it would be as noticeable - and I tend to ride pretty hard. Heck, those aluminum framed road bikes won a lot of races in the peloton. Having sold hundreds of them and ridden a few dozen I would encourage you in that size. Brent Emery was riding a 54 Vitus when he kicked our asses in a race in Tiajuana and it sure didn't seem to bother him very much on those hills. Obviously check out the bond integrity but this is something that I have been monitoring on the Internet for years now and there are much much more systemic bonding failures with much more recent frame product from company "T." A classic 979 Vitus in that size is close to the weight/stiffness value of first generation straight guage Titanium, (which was itself stock tubing for very corrosive byproducts at refining operations!)Vitus 979s did tend to be long in the top tube in a 54 and Emery even said that was why he had a short stem. Also be aware thay they replaced the clamp style seat lug for a goofy set screw that actually works pretty well in 1985 or 86. I always felt that the former had a finite amound of tightenings and loosenings to it. Nothing that you would need to worry about until the frame is,,,,well, err, like TWENTY FIVE YEARS OLD anyway! I see no way that anyone who assembles a full Mavic SSC Vitus 979 will not get his money back out of the bike later on. Sean Kelley demonstrated this aspect better than I could but you actually do learn to ride well and efficiently on a flexible frame after a while. That was the exact feedback we got from guys who migrated from Columbus SL to the Vitus 979 in the late 1980s. My 61Cm Ironman Carbon was represented to be one of the most flexible frames that some magazine ever tested but with an Octalink Dura Ace crank I still have a very hard time hitting both sides of the front derraileur cage. It goes down the road just fine. My 62Cm Gitane Tour De France with the Vitus 980 tubing is every bit as scary going downhill too. All that said 6000 or 7000 series Aluminum in those tubing sizes were not meant to last like Titanium or steel does and all aluminum will ultimately fail at some point, so you probably want to avoid a frame that a guy thirty pounds heavier that yourself had beat on for decades. Especially if he looks like he could dead lift twice what you can? And with the Vitus the frame finish will usually hold up so you would really want to look at the moving parts. The scuttlebutt among the Irish Amateurs back in the day was that Kelly would use at least four and sometimes as many as six 979 Viti in a single Tour De France. My bosses boss has the newer Vitus Aluminum-it's a lot wider tubing especially in the front end and the guy who told him to buy it has now convinced him that it has gone soft after eight or ten years. I maintain that it's still a perfectly suitable bike on the flats and I bet that "softened" or not it's not as flexible as my Ironman Carbon which has less than 2000 miles on it. Re: Alan Frames   Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 10:21 am logarto Joined: 18 Feb 2008 Posts: 56 verktyg wrote: Not wanting to sound like a contrarian, but I'm not sure that Alan was the "only" maker to use "glued and screwed" frame construction??? The technology was developed for the aerospace industry and also used in some high tech building construction (think geodesic domes). Vitus frames were "similar" to Alan frames in the sense that aluminum tubes were "secured" into the lugs with "aerospace adhesives". I've seen inferences on the web that Vitus frames were glued and screwed too, but I don't know so I didn't mention it. One other old timer who sees this one my way Chas. http://forums.roadbikereview.com/retro-classic/vitus-me-156404.html ___________________________________________ Cool...a Vitus is still one of my favorite's ... Small correction. Vitus are just glued...it's was Alan's that were screwed and glued... FYI, they are all english threaded Dave Hickey/ Fort Worth _________________________________________ The reason I'm so sure of myself was that the Vitus Aluminum and Carbon had the same "lug" pieces. The set screw seat lug first appears on the three tube Vitus Carbon and then migrated to the 979 Aluminum. The Alan Aluminum and Carbon did not have the same lug pieces. I always assumed that this was most likely because nobody ever threaded Carbon tubes; the "lugs" on the Alan Carbonio were both thicker and longer than the Alan aluminum. (Now if I could only remember which one wanted the 23.0 seatpost and which one wanted the unique quill seatpost??) As long as my brain is working, the Peugeot Carbon was clearly made in the same place but not quite identical to the Vitus three tube and there was no Peugeot nine tube Carbon product. If you were a bigger guy who shouldn't have been riding these frames in the first place, the Peugeot was supposed to be stiffer, but I couldn't get them at cost. Also it's important to note that the industry was absolutely scared to death of a carbon fiber fork back then, but by the late 1990s they were almost a manditory fashion accessory! Sure somebody may have done threaded aluminum bike frame assembly in the 30s or the 50s but in the world I lived in the Alans were the only product where the tubes were threaded together. They actually trained shop mechanics in performing tube replacements in the field which is kind of a nifty concept when you consider that the Alan cyclocross bike dominated that space for a long time and people will dent a round tube every now and then in that line of work. (So you probably don't want to pour any boiling water on the lugs of any of these beasts??) Once upon a time I even owned a Yamaha Viscount Aerospace Pro with the legendary "death fork II" too. a alan/gitane olympic record from 1976     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 2   Goto page 1, 2  Next 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.