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Holger

Hello there,
thanks to your wonderful and informatic Site and Forum my Gitane took the first trip today.
Its a NOS, never mounted frame and most of the parts were NIB wich
took me allmost one year to collect.

The bike rides very very beautiful, maybe i´ll take it to this years
" L`eroica".

best wishes from
Holger
Stuttgart/Germany

P.S. does anybody know why the break cable insert sometimes is on the top of the top-tube and sometimes beyond? (as on my bike)
Very Happy

Gtane

That's a terrific machine. Thanks for posting. Nice shots.

I hear that L`Eroica is one of THE events to attend.

I don't know the answer to your technical question but am sure one of the forum's experts will be able to help you.

Welcome!

lofter

very sweet looking machine! is that a frame made of columbus slx? the brake routing is because of the age . they switched it to the underside as the years went on . it was a trend just like the other manufacturers were doing. very pretty machine . i tried to buy one like that off german ebay last year but the shipping was to costly.

sandranian · Site Admin

Beautiful rennrad! If you go to l'Eroica, you will have to take a bunch of pictures for us. That is a goal of mine as well...someday, I want to do that ride on a 1960 Gitane. Still looking for that bike!

I have one question regarding your bike: Are those the original decals? It appears to be a 1987 Team Pro, but those were built with Reynolds, not columbus tubing... The 1983/84 Team Pro's had the brake cable routing on the topside of the top tube. It was moved to the underside in 1987. There may have been other variants, but I am pretty sure that all of the Columbus models had the rear brake cable routing coming through the top of the top tube. Please correct me if I am wrong on that....

Holger

it`s Columbus SLX, and the lugs are Cinelli France wich is stamped
on the bottom, dropouts Campagnolo.

sandranian · Site Admin

Wow. that is the first one, I believe, that I have seen with the cables running through the bottom...because that appears to be a 1984. By the way, I have a bunch of relatives in Hessen (Frankfurt A.M., and right around Kassel). My mother was born and raised there.....

I also notic that yours has the same fork ends as my 1987...tapered on the outside and left untouched (squared) on the inside, which I think is such a cool touch, even if it is "lazy" by italian standards!

Can you take some more detailed pics of your bike, including the fork crown and some other detail?

lofter

ive seen a couple with the slx sandman. they were listed as a 86. this might be the missing link in between the 84 and87 of yours. i seen one years ago in san fran on craigslist and one last year on german ebay.and the slx sticker is where it was on those two bikes.

Holger

i rode the last years edition of the l`eroica on a no name race bike from
the 70s. Its a wonderful, friendly event in sunny italy.
But the long distance (205km) wich i took, kills! (also the bike)
Its not because of the mountains, they are not that high, but you have
to go 110km on the `white roads`plenty of stones, holes. Other people
would take a mountain bike, but there are more than 2000 people on
old race bikes some without gear change! Really great!
look at www.eroica.it

back to my Gitane i´ve seen pictures from the Team of 1985 were some of the drivers had the cables beneath the bars cover, and they all had
the insert beyound the tube.
Maybe its just an improvement based on the likes of the drivers, i dont
know.
The frame it self is from a big dealer here in germany, he was a long time in business and the frame was never mounted, so the decals should be original. And its definitive SLX, wich you can easily check , cause there are 4 reinforcement lines inside the seat-tube.

lofter

verktyg

Beautiful bike! Cool

Put some clear plastic packaging tape on the underside of the down tube and other areas that are likely to get damaged from the rocks on the alba roads.

There are a number of local Classic Rendezvous members who ride L`Eroica every year. They come back with great tales and pictures of their adventure plus another old Italian bike or two.

They're all Italian bike aficionados and tend to look down their noses at all my French bikes. Last summer I broke down and bought a mid range 1988 Bianchi Giro bike. I told them it was "Celeste Envy" (Celeste is the sick room green color that Bianchi has used for years).

Again, great bike. Looking at the catalogs, it shows that Gitane went back to the 1984 decals on the 1987 Team Pro but as Stephan said, the catalog spec list 531P as the tubing. Your frame could have been made for a team that requested Columbus SLX???

Chas.

sandranian · Site Admin

I would say it is probably a 1985/86? The catalogues don't list anything like that, but I am sure they existed. After all, the pro teams weren't riding on the "Professionnel". So they must have been riding on that bike (SLX).

Good stuff...can't wait for some more pictures. I want to see what they did with the fork crown....

sandranian · Site Admin

Also...let me guess, the pictures were taken in front of your house?

Holger

Ha,Ha, not really its the fourth or fifth house of some ancient long
dead king and called `Solitude`on the top of a mountain.
But i like the route for training.
`Solitude`also was a race track for cars and motorcycle till the end of the
sixties.

Soon i will add detail pictures from the bike.

And yes there is another
new frame like mine from the same source, but it only got 54cm
center bottom / top seattube.
Its in the hands of a friend wich would eventually sell it cause its to small
for him.

Holger

here are more pictures, i hope they help a little bit.

sandranian · Site Admin

That is a really beautiful bike. In top condition as well. Really nice. I will want to add the pictures to the website, as it seems to fill a gap in the "top of the line" lineage. We don't have the "Renault/Systeme U" Replica bikes from 1985/86, because the top of the line listed in both french and US catalogues from the era was the Professionnel, but the team still used the "bubble letter" bikes in 1985 and 1986. It was late in 1986 (for the tour de france) where the bikes finally changed to the later "Cycles Gitane" decals (they were patterned after the systeme u jerseys. I have to look in my 1986 book, which shows Fignon at the start of the 1986 Tour de France, and see if I can make out any tubing decals.

Anyway, spectacular bike. Congratulations!