On a ride to the Farmers Market on saturday I passed by a bike leaning up against a street sign post. I took a look at it and mostly saw rust and ruined wheels, but it did have a set of Mafac Competition brakes. I went to the market and then came the same way back home and sure enough the bike was still there. I took a closer look and saw it was made from 531 Butted main tubes. The chrome plating was covered in rust and the wheels were missing the sewup tires and someone had ridden it without those tires for quite a while. Some of the spoke nipples had loosened and fallen off and the spokes were catching up in the freewheel.
I knocked at the door of the house it was in front of just to check if they were tossing it out, but that wouldn't explain the condition of the wheels. This bike was ridden from somewhere else and just left there. I took it home and began to check it out. The rust on the chrome came off nicely with some steel wool. The Crankset cleaned up nicely with just a rag. It's got a Nevar Star crankset, which looks like it was used very little. The chainrings show very little wear. The hubs are unlabeled, but have skewers that say BLOC G. The Mafac brake levers have plastic bodies and alloy blades, and have cable adjusters screwed into the tops.
I imagine with sewups and the Mafac Competitions (instead of Racers), and a
non-cottered crankset, that this was not the lowest model of Follis.
>From the photos
on the CR website, it's clearly not the top of the line either. It's
got Simplex rear
dropouts which I think are the ones that *won't* take other threaded bolts from
other rear ders. My uneducated guess is that this bike is from the
early or mid 70s.
I'm thinking that once I take it apart and assess the condition of the frame completely, I may just make this into a fixie or single speed bike.
If anyone has info to share, please drop me a line. I can probably shoot some photos tomorrow if that is desired.
rob hawks
richmond, ca