I bought this bike 11 years ago in France for 20€ and I absolutely love it !
However I can’t find any information about the brand and the date, I’m curious about it..
And tips to take care of it are also welcome 🙂
by Jack_Prout
I bought this bike 11 years ago in France for 20€ and I absolutely love it !
However I can’t find any information about the brand and the date, I’m curious about it..
And tips to take care of it are also welcome 🙂
by Jack_Prout
8 Comments
probably a department store bike, but it sounds like you got a good deal and if you enjoy that bike that’s excellent
who am I to wake you up. Just be careful when it’s raining.
This type of headbadge are usually added by the shop that sells the bike so in that case « dream » probably is not a brand or a model.
I know colnago released a model named dream but that looks nothing like it anyways.
If bought it France it could be anything from Motobecane, a Peugeot or a even Mercier, if you’re lucky, that’s been repainted (it’s hard to say if the paint job is original but it looks like it is).
What are the brands of the deraileurs and the crankset?
if you turn the fork the other way around you can reverse the bike. amazing.
A view from the other side would be informative
There might be a year code on the rims. The last two digits would be in parenthesis like this, <74>.
St. Etienne (the city) is the birthplace of the French bike industry. The brand itself made mostly low to mid range bikes until it was bought out by Mercier in the 80s.
I’ve had two of them (both mixte frames). My old school bike mechanic said the quality of the construction was good if they built it before lunch. After lunch, it depended on how much wine they drank. (in reality, during the bike boom of the 70s, they were cranking out so many frames, QC really suffered).
Yours will make a durable commuter for decades if you keep it from rusting! I agree with /u/janusz0 , you should definitely upgrade to aluminum wheels. It will shed several pounds from the bike and give you much better braking performance. Also, this bike has special “French” standard parts, so it can be a challenge to find replacements. The biggest issue will be your bottom bracket, so I would suggest you have it serviced at an old school bike shop. If you don’t change the bearings and grease, it will eventually fail.
Here’s info on the brand:
https://thevelocollective.com/st-etienne-cycles/
Here’s the Mixte I built and sold a couple years ago:
https://imgur.com/a/6ASQo7C
Advice: adjust the rear brake cable hanger, right now it’s adding a lot of friction for the rear brake.
I bought a Gitane Interclub (in the US) in about 1971. The quality of your frame looks similar to that one, the Interclub was sold as one step up from their lowest level model, but I think it was only components, and chrome on the fork ends, that was different. It was a basic bike, but still much better than department store quality.
Does it pay to put money into it? Depends, and good arguments can be made either way. For an old French frame of this quality many would say no. I say borderline. But if you can’t afford a ‘new’ bike, it can be worth smaller incremental upgrades. If you want to learn bike repair it’s not a bad bike to start with. French threading adds to the difficulty but reasonably priced French bottom brackets and headsets are available from Velo Orange. But if you replace the bottom bracket you will need a new crank too, and used ones aren’t too hard to find. Upgrading a bike like this: all that new stuff, even used, and assuming you have the skills and tools to do the job will very quickly exceed $200. Or keep riding it as is until you can afford a newer bike with fewer shortcomings.