I put a wheel in the truing stand today. I dug it out of the garage where it had been hanging up for a lot of years. When I pulled it down from the hook I recognized it immediately: we bought this wheel in Schmoo’s cycling shop in Swansea more than thirty years ago. It had been part of the build of a nice Falcon frame for my stepson, Gawain, that we had found in the market in Machynlleth while on a bicycle tour in Wales in the late eighties. This is a French wheel- and a size that is not used much today- 27 x 11/4 which has been replaced by 700c. It has a Pelissier hub and Rigida rims and is nice enough for an almost antique. It needed some slight truing so I put it in the stand and tweaked it.
It’s a perfect fit for the bike I recently picked up. An anomaly now- it’s a PanWorld racer with a mixte frame and gaudy decals and Simplex gears that date back to the seventies. The story is that a mixte style frame- which is easier to step over- was initially meant to be used by both sexes, but then somehow became a woman’s bike. Things are changing now and they are used by everyone. In the nineties I used to pick up French bikes like this for next to nothing in the thrift store. I bought a white Peugeot which I fixed up and rode for years with lowered gears and eventually, flat bars and a high stem. I’ll show a pic of this later.
French bikes: I really like them and was delighted to find this one, though the brand eluded me until I did some research. This one came with all original equipment- Simplex gears front and back, Pivot stems and Mafac centre pull brakes which I have always loved. My fascination with Mafacs goes back even further: back to the 1960s and my first real racing bike- A Cinelli with Campagnolo ends and yes, Mafacs.
I remember reading some years ago that more Tour de France’s have been won by riders using Mafacs the any other brake. And that the story of their success is a sad one because they because so common and appeared on almost every French bike for so many years that they eventually lost their appeal. Back of the store here is the tale of the decline of French manufacturing of bicycle parts and their replacement by the Japanese. But I don’t want to go there yet. Let’s keep that for another time.
The wheels on the PanWorld were badly out of true and rubbing against the brake blocks. I took them off and was looking for a fitting replacement while I worked on the originals and that’s when I remembered the wheels from Schmoo’s. Both sets of rims are made by Rigida but the wheels on the PanWorld have cheaper steel rims rather than aluminum alloy. This was pretty standard equipment of the bike boom bikes of the 1970s, and you can find arguments online for and against their use. They have small marks or serrations on the sides of the rims which some people claim help to throw water away from the rim. Anyway, I am bringing them back into shape so that they are useable. Sometimes it amazes me how bikes get left abandoned for years and years and and then they are rediscovered by someone like me and all the abandoned technology and its story comes back.
So here we go about the PanWorld. I didn’t recognize the brand and looked it up online where there is some dispute and a claim that they were made in Belgium. This would make sense as all the parts are recognizably French. The decals on the bike I found are cheap and gaudy and terrible but don’t offer much of a clue. And then I found it- stuck under the decal on the head tube there a very small almost transparent sticker which says Made in Belgium. Despite the cheap stickers and lack of a date stamp or serial number this is a very nice frame. So I did some more digging and found out that the major bike manufacturer in Belgium is called Flandria. Online, there’s an old catalogue from the seventies and it shows a bike almost exactly like the bike I picked up. Frame details, parts, all are identical. Except for the saddle which is an ostentatious built for comfort sprung knockoff that could do you serious damage.
Anyway, I am reasonably certain that I’ve found the bike’s manufacturer and since PanWorld has no recognizable reputation and the decals are badly installed, I’ll probably take them off. Yesterday, after I’d started writing this blog, I finished truing the aluminum Rigida wheel as far as I could then found a matching front one in the garage. I got this from the Salt Lake Bicycle Collective some time ago as it looked familiar. So there you are. I then went and replaced the tortuous saddle with something more appropriate and had a lot of frigging about to find a saddle clamp that would fit on a French seat post.
I’d forgotten this about repairing French bikes. There’s always something to adjust as none of the sizes and threads are identical to American or British bikes. Things are a bit easier now as almost everything is metric, but years ago this could cause serious headaches and led me to make several special orders when fitting up the old white Peugeot and a nineteen eighties tandem of the same make. Now, of course, you can find things on French Bay and I’ve done this a couple of times. I have to be careful though, as I’m liable to get sidetracked.
