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1972 TdF for sale 
PostPosted: Sun Dec 21, 2008 11:51 pm Reply with quote
Squadra1
Joined: 28 Sep 2008
Posts: 5
Location: Washington State
Bike sold, thanks for the interest. Good luck!


Last edited by Squadra1 on Mon Sep 28, 2009 6:24 pm; edited 1 time in total

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1972 TDF for sale 
PostPosted: Fri Jan 30, 2009 9:44 pm Reply with quote
trials guy
Joined: 30 Jan 2009
Posts: 75
Location: Woodacre Calif
Hello - Nice looking TDF. If it is still available, can you send me some additional photos and tell me what the standover is? Sew-ups or clinchers? Thanks; John[/b]
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Nice TdF 
PostPosted: Sat Jan 31, 2009 9:05 am Reply with quote
verktyg
Joined: 14 Jan 2007
Posts: 2814
Location: SF Bay Area
Nice bike, good price too!

How did I miss this one? Too bad as I'm all biked out for now (I'll give someone else a chance). Smile


The Super Corsa that I got several weeks ago has those same Weinmann alloy clincher rims. I forgot how hard they are to true up and keep trued. Those rims always had a narrow spot at the weld which caused pulsations when braking.


Remembering back to around 1973, I think that it was possible to special order Gitane TdFs from Mel Pinto (the importer) with 27" clincher wheels instead of the standard tubulars. They had these same narrow Weinmann alloy clincher rims. I'm not sure whether they came from the factory that way or Mel Pinto swapped rims.

In those days most performance bikes came with sewups. There were only a few commonly available makes of alloy clincher rims. Weinmann seemed to be the most popular. Italian bikes came with Fiame, Ambrosia or Nisi alloy clincher rims. By the mid 70s the great Super Champion Model 58 clincher rims became more available along with alloy clincher rims from Rigida, Mavic and others. Weinmann also introduced their Concave alloy rims which were a big improvement over their earlier models.









I was a wuss when I bought my first pro bike. It was a new 1971 Gitane Super Corsa that I got really cheap at the end of 1973. I had the bike shop switch out the sewup rims for a set 27" Weinmann alloy clinchers.

A few months later I rode a bike with sewups for the first time. The ride was such an improvement over existing clinchers that I had a second set of wheels built for tubular tires. For the next 10 years I only rode clinchers on beater bikes that I used for commuting.

Today, there's not that much performance difference between some modern high performance clinchers and standard road sewups.

Chas.
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1972 TdF for sale 
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