Welcome to The Velo Collective
The definitive resource for vintage French bikes.
If you love vintage French bikes, there are lots of reviews and restorations, bike repair tips and information on this site dedicated to classic bikes. You can also find posts on other vintage European, Japanese and American road bikes, many with links to videos on our Youtube channel. Thanks for visiting!
Shifter Problems With My Vintage Peugeot
The Shifting Mystery It's always really disappointing when you build your bike and get it primed for the road, clean and freshly greased, only to find on your first test run that it's unrideable. When you change up a gear for the first time, and.....
Clincher Wheelset or Tubular?
Weight Weenies A beautiful wheelset completes a bike. But let's face it, nowadays the cost of a high quality wheelset can be astronomical. The desire, the obsession, for such spectacularly lightweight wheels is obvious when visiting bike shops selling...
A Review of the 1977 Huret Allvit
Moving the Masses The Huret Allvit was a workmanlike transmission set and could never be described as inspiring or beautiful. It was mass produced for millions of cheap bikes in the 1970's, including my own first bike as a kid. From the big French brands...
Simplex Rear Derailleur Test: SX 410 and S001
The Derailleurs Back in 1978 you had a good choice of Simplex rear derailleurs, but here we see two of them from that year in very different conditions. The better derailleur, as one would expect, has survived the years of service much better than its cheaper...
French Bottom Bracket Service ( Video )
French Bottom Bracket - Service I've uploaded another repair video to youtube titled: French bottom bracket service video. I hope this is useful and can provide some easy visual steps to how best service your vintage bottom bracket. French bottom brackets have...
A Rare Vintage bike: the Francis Poirier
A Rare Vintage Bike: the Marque This is a rare vintage bike indeed. There's very little information about FR Poirier bikes on the internet, even on French websites. Search for "Poirier" and you will come across an old French firm that used to make some...
Stronglight Crankset Removal
Stronglight Crankset Removal - Video Stronglight crankset removal for pre-1982 models requires a special tool, a 23.35 crank puller. This particular tool is not easy to find these days and can be quite expensive to buy, even some bike shops won’t have the tool...
Spindle Length For Vintage Peugeot, Mercier, Motobecane
Spindle Length for Vintage Peugeot Mercier Motobecane Here are some spindles removed from older French bikes, to help calculate the spindle length for vintage Peugeot, Mercier, Motobecane and other French bikes. This can help with any chain line issues which...
Vintage French Wheelsets Compared
Alpin Hubs and Super Champion Competition Rims I really liked these Alpin hubs: hi flange, beautifully made, a French tubular wheelset of high quality that was very light. I polished them up as they were a little dull after decades of service, and they ended up...
Adjusting Mafac Centrepull Brakes
Adjusting Mafac Centrepull Brakes Buy a vintage French bike and it will likely have Mafac centrepull brakes. These brakes are very adaptable with their long reach arms, and earned a reputation over the years for providing reliable and effective brakes....
The Short History Of Spidel
The Final Throw of the Dice Things looked bad for the French bike parts industry. The year was 1984, and the market was rapidly changing; the reign of French components, once so dominant in the bike boom, was now being eroded by competition from...
French Stem Sizing 22.0mm
22.0mm Sizing French stem sizing is a quirk of the vintage bicycle era. Bikes made before 1983 will likely have a different steerer sizing than other bikes. Instead of 22.2mm, which is the standard steerer size for most bikes, vintage French steerers take a...
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