Tag Archives: French bicycle

When in Doubt, Accessorize

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Late 40’s/early 50’s Mercier Meca Dural, as originally acquired – with incorrect 700c wheel size and various missing parts.

To counteract the too frequent headaches and setbacks on the mechanical side of bringing this Mercier Meca Dural back to life, I decided to focus on the “extras” that are often regarded as nonessential accessories – chain guards, lighting, and racks.  As fashion experts know, it’s the extras that really make one’s ensemble come together.

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Baffling chain guard hardware.

Mounting a chain guard, however, proved daunting.  I had a nice aluminum Rigid-branded guard from this same era, which fit well around the 46T Louis Verot chain ring.  But, one of the odd things about this bike is that all the frame mounted braze-ons and brackets are missing.  I had this chain guard hardware set, shown above, that included a baffling assemblage of clamps, threaded bolts, and numerous nuts and washers, but I couldn’t determine how to make this hardware work on this bike and with the Rigid-branded chain guard.

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Creative chain guard mount – spotted in downtown Portland.

Fortunately, while downtown waiting to catch a train a while back, I spotted this wonderful Raleigh Sports with an interesting chain guard mounting solution.  I snapped this photo with my iPhone so that I wouldn’t forget what I saw.  Meanwhile, I searched the internet for chain guard mounting lore.  Velo-Orange came to the rescue, with a nice discussion of different kinds of frame braze-ons for chain guard mounts, as well as how to configure hardware when your frame lacks such mounts.  You’ll note in the photo above that this cyclist has mounted the chain guard using eyebolts on the guard, which make it easy to adjust the chain guard when used with the long threaded bolts – with the threaded portion attaching the the frame clamp.  Using these ideas, I anticipate that I’ll get the Rigid chain guard mounted properly, but I can see that I’ll need a bit more in the way of hardware.

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Luxor 65 headlamp.

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Creases at back of lamp to hold cables in place.

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Very pretty branded Luxor stem clamp.

Moving on to this bike’s lighting system, I re-installed the front Luxor 65 headlamp back on to its Luxor branded stem mounting bracket.  Luxor lighting is very well thought of, and there is even one enthusiast who loves Luxor 65 so much that  the cyclist machined a copper heat sink for their beloved Luxor light so that LED’s could be used with this system.

I don’t plan to go that far, but I am impressed with the quality of this light.  When I was setting it up, I noticed creases at the back of the headlight shell that I thought were caused by the shell being dropped and dented.  But once I had the light mounted, I could see that the creases were in the perfect position to hold the front brake cables in place.  I don’t know if these dents were a fortunate mishap – but it works for me.  You’ll note that I used red cable housing for this build.  These housings are vintage from the 1970’s – they are a darker red than the new red Jaguar cables, and match the dark red color in the Mercier head badge.  Hopefully, the fashion police will agree with my choice.

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Installing the lighting meant coming up with a fork mounted dynamo, which this bike would have originally had (as there is no dynamo mount on the seat stays).  I located a vintage dynamo fork bracket, and installed it on the fork blade over some black cloth handlebar tape, to protect the steel fork.  For now, I have set up this very lightweight and free spinning Soubitez Argil dynamo, which is not from this era, but dates probably to the 1960’s.  If it works well, I’ll keep it.  If not, I’ll source a dynamo from this era.  You’ll see that the fork bracket includes a grounding set screw in the middle of the bracket.  This provides the electrical ground for this system, so it needs to contact the steel fork. But, you don’t want to screw it in too far, as it could damage the fork.

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Finally came the ideas for a rear rack.  I have had this interesting 1940’s steel rack in my shop for awhile.  I haven’t found the right project for it.  I dry mounted the rack on the bike and found that it seemed to fit well.

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This steel rack is reasonably light weight and features fully adjustable stays, so that it should fit on pretty much any configuration.  It is a bit rusted and needs to be cleaned and polished.  It’s not the strongest rack out there, but should work well for this bicycle, which was designed for city riding.

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One of the fun things about this Mercier Meca Dural, is that it served as the inspiration for Public Bike’s Champs-Elyisees d8i bicycle. The above photo provided their inspiration.  When I have completed the restoration of my Mercier Meca Dural, I hope to be equally inspired, and inspiring.

Clear Coating a Vintage Steel Fork, Part II

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I have now clear coated the vintage steel fork which was part of the 1940s/50s Mercier Meca Dural I have been working on for the past year.  The bicycle was mostly original, with its beautiful aluminum frame in fantastic condition.  Unfortunately, the fork was terribly pitted, made worse by the application of an amateur spray paint job.

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This Mercier Meca Dural bicycle was built in the late 40’s or early 50’s.  The main tubes are made from “duralumin” – the same stuff blimps were made from. The forks on these bicycles were always steel, and in this case the fork had probably been originally painted gray or was chromed, to match the color of the unpainted aluminum on the main tubes.  Because the main tubes cannot rust, there was no need to paint them.

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But, the original fork was compromised – it was pitted with corrosion and rust. I needed to decide how to restore it or replace it.  After many hours of paint removal, sanding, and polishing, the fork looks much better. I became concerned about removing too much material from the fork blades, so I finally tossed in the towel.   On the bright side (pun intended), I guess you might say this fork has patina in spades.  I ended up deciding that I wanted to clear coat the fork (for now) rather than chroming it or sending it out for a professional paint job.  That would enable me to continue restoring the bicycle, which I am anxious to complete.

I decided to use Proctaclear by Everbrite for the paint, and MAAS metal polish for the final finish work prior to painting.  Both products worked very well.

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The steps I used, after removing the original paint and then sanding with finer and finer sandpaper to create a smooth surface are as follows:

  1. I polished the fork blades and crown with MAAS metal polish – this took hours!  However, I really like this polish and will continue using it for steel parts.  It’s not as good as NevrDull on aluminum fenders, but can make even funky metal parts look very nice.
  2. After polishing, I cleaned the fork blades with alcohol and a soft cloth – I didn’t have to use an acid neutralizing baking soda bath, because as advised by the Protectaclear instructions, MAAS polish does not contain acid.  However, some restorers do this process anyway, regardless of the polish used.
  3. I did a final wipe down on the fork blades with a tack cloth – to remove any debris from the surface.
  4. I cleaned the paint brushes and prepared my work area so that I could avoid fouling the brushes on an unclean surface.  I put the fork upright in my work stand so that the paint would flow downward. My paint brushes were new, so I only needed to wash them in warm water to remove their protective coating – however, see below.
  5. I poured a tiny bit of Proctectaclear into a clean glass jar – this stuff goes a long ways.  The small container I purchased could probably cover 2 bicycles in full.2016-11-15-007
  6. I painted the fork blades with smooth, even strokes.  The paint went on easily, and as the instructions advise, the paint will naturally smooth itself out on the surface so that you won’t see any brush marks.  This was an accurate description, and the painting itself took no time at all.  However…see below!
  7. As I was painting, tiny surface anomalies began to appear in the painted surface.  At first I thought the paint was reacting to something on the fork blades, but then I realized that my paint brush was depositing little particles onto the blades.  The new brushes still had some leftover protective glue which I thought I had washed off.  I then stopped painting, cleaned the brush extensively, then wiped the brush with tack cloth, and that solved the problem. I had to carefully remove the tiny particles with my fingernail (gloved) and then smooth the paint out again.
  8. After a couple of hours, I applied a 2nd coat, as provided for in the instructions.
  9. The paint cures hard in 4 – 5 days.  It is very soft prior to this, and even scuffed a bit when I laid the fork down on a wood surface about 24 hours after the final paint coat.

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The painted fork looks pretty much exactly like the raw steel fork. It really is a clear coat. I will know soon just how robust the paint is, but for now I am excited to begin building up the frame and completing the restoration.

The whole process to restore this fork took well over 25 hours.  Rather than following the typical 80/20 rule for paint jobs (80% preparation time, 20% painting time), this job was more like 99%/1%.  The painting portion of the work was almost a let down, because it was really so easy compared to all the other work involved in preparing the fork.  I’ll plan to do a long-term update once the Mercier Meca Dural is restored and back out on the road.

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Unrestored 1940s/50s Mercier Mecal Dural

 

Cranky

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Vintage TA crankset with triple rings – 48/40/28.

The lovely & vintage TA crankset which I selected for my 1980 Meral 650b conversion has been an unusually frustrating interaction between the characteristics of vintage components and modern cycling requirements.  I chose this component for two reasons:  the crank arms were 160 mm, helping me to eliminate toe overlap on my 1980 sportif frame; and, since the Meral came with a TA bottom bracket,  I thought it would be nice to match it to a TA crankset of the same era.

But this crankset was problematic.  The big ring had a massive wobble that I had straightened a few times in my vise.  And, even though I use a similarly geared crankset on my Terry – a Shimano 600 with 48/40/30 rings – there was something about the TA rings that never really came together.  I never landed on my “cruising gear” even though I went through two different cassettes and two different front and rear derailleurs.  And, the drive train was always noisy, even after trying a few different chains.

Some frame-up builds come together perfectly, and some require more tweaking.  The Meral ended up being in the latter camp.

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Version 2 with TA 44/28 rings.

I decided that I might prefer a compact setup for this bike.  Since most of my current riding is commuting, it is important if only for safety reasons not to have to worry about gear selection while riding.  My other bikes provide easy and intuitive gear selection, so that my eyes can stay on the road.

A large tooth difference between the chain rings was de rigueur back in the heyday of French cyclo touring.  So, maybe it would work for me too.  I sourced NOS TA 44 and 28 teeth rings on eBay.  The rings are very pretty, and gave the Meral a real “French” look.

Unfortunately, for my kind of riding, the 28 tooth ring did not work at all.  Essentially, I was now riding a bike with a single chain ring plus a bail out gear, rather than a regular double crank which allows for even steps between the gears.  And, shifting between the two front rings often required a triple shift to maintain cadence. To make matters worse, the small chain ring was noisy in certain gears due to the extreme angle of the chain, front to rear and side to side.

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Version 3 with 44/32 rings.

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Beautiful new TA Pro Vis 32 tooth ring.

Not one to give up, I decided that a larger toothed small chain ring would be the answer.  I ordered a brand new 32 tooth TA ring from Boulder Bicycle.  The new ring is beautifully etched, and looks quite fine with the older crankset.  Even better, after installing yet another cassette (a SRAM 7 speed 12-32) to accommodate this new gearing, and adding a few links to the chain, the bike’s gearing is perfect for what I need.  My new gear inch range is 26 to 95, with even steps between the gears.  My shifting pattern is normal, and I have a cruising gear on my big ring that matches a comfortable cadence on a flat surface.  While I was at it, I adjusted the Simplex Super LJ front derailleur lower to make my front shifts crisper.  This front derailleur uses a parallelogram with an extreme angle, so in order to make it work well, it needs be about 1 mm above the teeth of the larger chain ring, rather than the usual 2 or 3 mm, to achieve ideal shifting.

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1980 Meral 650b as currently configured.

This bike was meant to take the place of my old beloved 1976 Centurion Pro Tour, which I crashed irreparably in 1999.  It has been a “long and twisted road” finding the right bike which can carry me not only to work and back, but to the undiscovered as well as the familiar. But this is what I have been yearning for.  A soul mate.