I picked up an old Cycles Gitane tandem out of the classifieds for $400 in February '99. It is a French bike, and I think it was built in the early '70s. It is a touring bike, with 27" wheels, drop bars and triple chainwheels.
I picked up an old Cycles Gitane tandem out of the classifieds for $400 in February '99. It is a French bike, and I think it was built in the early '70s. It is a touring bike, with 27" wheels, drop bars and triple chainwheels.
There is another identical Gitane tandem in Melbourne - we bumped into the owner the first time we rode our tandem on Critical Mass. Even though both bikes have been modified extensively over the years, it was interesting to see some of what was and wasn't original on them.
The bike has a short wheelbase for a tandem. As well as having short rider "compartments", there is an S-bend in the rear seat tube to roughly fit the shape of the wheel, allowing short chain and seat stays.
Assumedly because of the short chain stays, the main drive chain runs to the front bottom bracket (the timing chain is on the left hand side of the bike, and there is an idler pulley on the slack side of the drive chain, near the rear bottom bracket). This avoids any problems due to chain flex when running in extreme cross-chained gears.
Unfortunately, the chain is too short to run in big-big anyway, and the deraileur cages aren't long enough to run in small-small without lots of rubbing and a loose chain.
Gearing is 3x6 (was 3x5 until the screw-on freewheel cluster died), operated by Simplex (French) friction levers on the down tube. A Simplex rear deraileur does the work at the back. The front deraileur was a Shimano FE, whatever that is. It is now an older model Shimano Exage LX-400, which apparently has a longer cage than most front derailers, allowing it to handle our 28-42-53 chainrings. I have no idea what was original, as the sister bike had been heavily modified in this department: he had converted it to shift at the rear crankset, with a freewheel ratchet in the crankset to allow for a lazy "passenger". His timing chain is also on the right, taking up one of the 3 chainrings - thus he has only 2x5(?) gears).
The crankset has the name "super maxy" forged into the arms, which I understand to be a Sugino series from the era. It is a proper tandem set and made of aluminium alloy, but is pretty old and/or cheap. The front left (i.e. triple) crank has a 3-arm spider, making it difficult to source a replacement for the granny ring, which is a bit bent. I will probably eventually have to replace this crank with something more modern. The timing chainrings are fairly small (32t?) and are merely pressed onto their respective cranks.
The bike came with a 27" wheel (steel Japanese rim) on the front, and a 700c (steel French rim) on the back. Each wheel had 40 spokes. The fork is not original, so I expect neither was the front wheel.
The rear hub is an 40-hole Atom (French) tandem hub, with a drum brake. I found a pair of 40-hole 27" Mavic Module-4 alloy rims cheap, and built one onto the Atom hub with DT 14g stainless spokes (the old steel rim was beyond truing). Since 40 hole rims are a scarce resource, I have saved the other Mavic for a spare rear rim.
I built the new rim onto the Atom hub because, although the hub brake is rather ineffectual, it is handy to have. At the time, I was also keen to stay with genuine equipment as much as possible. I've since thought more about it...the bike isn't really good enough, or genuine enough, to have any historic value, and it is undeniable that modern equipment is superior to old. At the moment the drum brake is operated by the Rear Admiral (stoker).
The front hub was nothing special, so I was not bothered about saving it. I picked up a second hand 36-hole STX mountain bike hub. If the bike had been considerd solid enough to ride with 40 plated spokes on the rear, I figured I could build a strong enough wheel, with 36 DT stainless spokes and a stronger hub, for the front. Finding a 36 hole 27" rim turned out to be just as difficult an excercise as finding 40 hole rims had been. I eventually found a Velocity Twin Hollow, and built it on to the STX hub. The old front wheel is still intact, so we now have a spare (even if it does have dents in the braking surfaces).
We roll on Michelin World Tour 27x1¼" touring tyres. They're holding up pretty well after several hundred kilometers.
The front rim brakes were cheap and nasty low-profile (i.e. modern) centre-pull cantilevers. Rear rim brakes were very early Mafac (French) centre-pull cantilevers (high-profile type). I assume the Mafacs were original equipment. The sister bike had the same rear cantilever brake bosses, which suggests that they were original - this gives the best clue as to the bike's age. We also have a rear drum brake, which is part of the Atom hub.
After using a set of Shimano Alivio centre-pull cantilever brakes for a while, we are now equipped with Shimano LX V-brakes front and rear.
Along with the brakes, we use LX V-brake levers. This only became possible by losing the drop-bars in favour of flat bars. I've never been a fan of drops anyway. The original levers were rather old Dia-Compe, which may or may not have been original. One of them is modified to take 2 cables, so that the pilot can control all 3 brakes. I put a spare brake lever (originally off my old MTB, which became a single-speed shopping bike) on the rear bars and connected it to the drum brake, so that the navigator can drag it on downhills if she thinks we are going too fast.
