List,
It seems like quite a few of these requests come in, so I hate to add to the pile, but I have a very nice unidentified French bike that I'm trying to put a name on.
It seems to be 50s-early 60s as equipped, and the frame details are curious: Nervex Pro Legere lugs, Vitus main tubes and fork, toptube cable braze-ons, and what appear to be Simplex LJ dropouts (big wedge derailleur tab that extends out from the dropout).
Unique details are: semi-wrap seatstay caps with a wide, flat taper, and the buttressed (?) brake bridge that mounts the brake through the bottom.
It's stamped 8464 near the top headlug, and 4 at the bottom, and 729 on the seat cluster. The BB shell is Nervex Pro and has a very long number stamped on it, that I assume to be a Nervex serial.
It's built up in typical French fashion for bikes of that era: Simplex Juy/TdF derailleurs, Stronglight cottered crank with Simplex rings, CLB brakeset etc.
It seems like it has lived in the NYC Tri-State area since it was imported, if that helps.
The biggest mystery to me is the combination of Nervex Pro lugs and Vitus tubing - it seems that even with the French bikes it was always Nervex/Reynolds, so maybe that can help identify as well.
Here are pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/
Thanks in advance for your collective knowledge,
Ben Butler
Brooklyn, NY