Category Archives: 650B

1947 Camille Daudon – Component Details

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After many years of stops and starts, I’m finally completing my restoration of the 1947 Camille Daudon that came into my possession about 5 years ago.  The above photo shows its condition when I first acquired it.  The frame had been re-chromed, but the rest of the bike hadn’t been overhauled.  There was seemingly not that much to do, but one thing that hadn’t been set up by the previous owner was the Cyclo derailleur, which uses a one-piece cable set up that can be challenging to master.  There were a few other mishaps that made the process longer than I imagined – but that is kind of the norm when it comes to restoring bicycles from this era.

I’ve previously written a great deal about this wonderful bicycle, but haven’t yet described its components, so I’ve included a compendium below.  The bike as pictured weighs about 20 lbs, and as you will see, all components were selected for their quality and light weight.

Wheelset – Pelissier Plume hubs on unbranded 650b alloy rims with Huret drilled winguts

Bars – Unbranded alloy city style bars, with wood dowels.

Stem – Camille Daudon lugged stem with hidden tool kit.  The stem clamps directly to the steerer tube.

Brake calipers – LAM Super Dural Model H with original pads.  The interchangeable hardware allows for reversing the direction of the cable (for mounting on a mixte-style frame).  The caliper arms have no up-down adjustment, meaning that brake bridge and fork length precision was required.

Brake levers – Unbranded alloy levers 

Headset – Stronglight – model unknown

Cankset – Stronglight 49 with Rosa 42 tooth ring, 165 mm arms, anodized blue.

Bottom Bracket – Unbranded alloy with hollow axle and reverse thread left side threading, weight 197 grams.

Derailleur/shifter – Cyclo Standard, Daudon modified shifter

Freewheel – 4 speed J. Moyne – 14-24 (identification thanks to reader Bruno)

Grips – Original Velox grips replaced with Felt Grenoble

Saddle & Seatpost – Ideale Model 65 with duralumin frame and alloy clamps (broken).  (The broken clamps spurred an unsuccessful years long search for a replacement, and I ended up modifying some clamps designed for tubular rails).  Unbranded alloy stem with closed top.

Pedals – Unbranded with alloy cages

Camille Daudon was known for modifying existing components and creating his own. It is possible that many of the unbranded pieces were created by him.  These Daudon-created parts might include the seatpost, bottom bracket, brake levers and maybe even the pedals and rims.

The final step is setting up the Cyclo derailleur and shifter – a daunting task.  Fortunately I recently discovered a technical guide dating from the 1930′s on the disrailigears website, which has proved very helpful.  Stay tuned for the results of the last step in restoring this wonderful machine!

Sunshine Pro-am Hubs vs. Ofmega Gran Premio

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Front hubs – Sunshine Pro Am on the left.

Rear hubs, Sunshine Pro Am on the right.

I recently needed to build a wheelset for a bike with 122mm rear spacing.  That meant that I could re-use its original Sunshine Pro Am hubs (spaced at 120mm on the rear), taken off the original tubular rims, or select a NOS hub set of similar quality and from the same era (mid-1970’s).  This might expand my hub choice options, because I could probably more easily locate a 126mm rear axle set, which the rear dropouts can easily accept without having to spread the rear triangle.

I ended up locating a 1980 NOS Ofmega Gran Premio 6200 hubset, with low flanges and 32 holes front and rear.  I had previously restored a few bikes that featured Ofmega components, so was familiar with Ofmega’s quality.

Ofmega Gran Premio 6200

Both sets were similar in weight, with the Ofmega set being only slightly heavier, probably due to the longer rear axle and fewer holes in the flanges. To verify my initial impression of the quality of Ofmega components, I researched the history of the company and discovered that its beginnings are murky at best.

According to VeloBase, the Italian component maker was founded by Mario and Dino Perotti sometime in the 1960’s, when they obtained patents for various bottom bracket designs.  It is posited by the disraeligears site that Ofmega had a relationship to the OMG Company, which in turn may have included the Gnutti brand in its portfolio.  By 2006, Ofmega appears to have finally shut down, although the exact date and cause of its demise is unknown.  For better or for worse, Ofmega is best known for its colorful and strangely shaped rear derailleurs, which evoke derision or amusement, depending on your perspective.

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Sunshine/Sansin’s history is similarly opaque.  I had believed that Sunshine was somehow part of Maeda and SunTour, but I wasn’t sure.  After a number of failed English language Google searches, I tried searching on Yahoo’s Japanese search engine, and came across a Wikipedia post (in Japanese) that I used Google translate to read, then took a picture of the brief entry, shown above. This confirmed that Sunshine was indeed a division of Maeda industries, a company with a very long history going back to 1912. This lead me to focus on what Maeda was doing in the 1970’s when my Sunshine Pro Am hubs were made.

From there I discovered that Howie Cohen of West Coast Cycles (and creator of the NIshiki brand in cooperation with Kawamura of Japan), was instrumental in encouraging Japanese component makers to bring high quality bicycles and components to the US market. Howie has passed away, but a website dedicated to his work lives on.  Howie had personal relationships and went cycling with many of the leaders of Japan’s cycling industry, and successfully convinced them that Americans were sick and tired of riding our heavy one speed balloon tired clunkers.  He turned out to be right.

I ended up deciding to re-use the bike’s original Sunshine Pro Am hubs, which I built using Velo Orange 650b rims.  I had a set of Grand Bois 32mm tires that I had originally planned to use for another project which never materialized.  The tires were relatively easy to mount, although it did take a few inflation/deflation attempts to seat the tires correctly on the rims.  As you can see from the above photos, the highly polished V-O rims look quite fine.

I’m glad I went with the Sunshine hubs – this is my new (old) 1975 Centurion Pro Tour, converted to 650b.  I will share more about the conversion in an upcoming post, but let’s just say for now that I am having a blast riding this well-handling and beautiful old machine.

Winter Ride Around Canby, Oregon

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For the past several years, I have been drawn south to Canby from my Portland home base for winter cycling.

The Willamette River bends in a sharp s-curve at Canby before heading north toward its confluence with the mighty Columbia River.  Its beauty calls to me.  Fall colors, winter which promises spring, and the mesmerizing quiet of the ride offer a compelling contrast to cycling in Portland.

Today, I followed this little town’s cycling loop, rather accidentally.  I’ve ridden here a lot, and have ventured east of town up onto the plateau that sits above the river, and boasts the best of Oregon farm country – hazelnut groves, vegetable crops, and horses, cattle, sheep, and llamas a-plenty.  The basic route depicted above is a totally flat 11 mile loop.  It’s easy to add side trips to your journey, as there’s lots to explore around this sweet little town.

I’ve recently converted my 1980’s custom Meral 650b bicycle to more upright style handlebars.  On today’s ride one of my goals was to evaluate the bike’s ergonomics with the new Velo-Orange Tourist handlebars.

I wasn’t sure how to think about the brake levers for this bike – I wanted to stay true to its French heritage, and resisted purchasing new brake levers for the upright bar.  I finally settled on these black vintage Mafac levers.  I also removed 3 cm of bar material from each bar end of the V-O tourist bars.  I have found that modern upright style bars are generally too wide and long, and without cutting them down can give your bike an out of balance appearance, not to mention being uncomfortable.

To keep the bars free for additional hand positions I opted for stem mounted shifters.  These SunTour ratcheting shifters performed just fine, but I did have to adjust the position of the rear derailleur on down-shifts, whereas upshifts were near perfect.  I may replace these with some stem mounted Simplex Retrofriction shifters once I have a mounting option identified.

Oregon City Falls

The City of Canby sits along the Willamette River, upstream from the falls and locks at the historic town of Oregon City.  Today, the river was swift moving.  Maybe, I was too.

My 1980’s Meral is built with Reynolds 531 tubing, with a fully chromed fork (and with chromed main tubes underneath the dark lavender paint). That, plus converting the bike to 650b has made it one of my most treasured bicycles.  Happy riding in 2019!