French Bike Rebuild

My last post showed how to take an old French Motobecane Nomade apart for service. Now I'll show how to put it back together. First I cleaned and repacked the bottom bracket bearings with fresh grease. I also cleaned out the cups and the spindle before reassembly:

With the cups, bearings, and spindle back in place, you need to adjust the bearings so that the spindle turns freely without play. This is done by turning the left side cup in or out until the bearings aren't loose, and don't bind. Then you tighten the lockring to hold the adjustment:

Next I moved on to the wheel bearings. I don't have a removal tool for this freewheel, but luckily you can actually repack the bearings with a Normandy freewheel in place.

Loosen the locknut on the left side, then remove the nut, spacers, and cone:

Now slide the axle out:

And clean everything (there's plenty of room with this freewheel):

Now just pack the bearing cups with grease, put the nice clean ball bearings back in place, then reassemble the axle. The bearing adjustment is similar to the bottom bracket, just make sure the axle turns freely and the wheel has no play in it when you're done. Moving on to the headset:

Clean everything, then pack the bearing cups and retainers with grease. Next you can slide the fork back into the head tube and secure it with the top race. Reinstall any spacers or brake hangers as well:

Once again you need to dial in the headset's bearing adjustment. Just make sure you can turn the fork easily, and it doesn't rock back and forth in the frame. You need to screw the top race in to tighten the bearings, and unscrew it to loosen them. As with the other bearings, the adjustment is sensitive, and 1/8th of a turn can make a big difference. Once you find the perfect setting, lock it in with the top nut:

Here I put the wheels back on. The tires are still good, and definitely not the originals. Since they're not dry rotted or cracking, and still have lots of tread I get to reuse them:

Time to put the cranks back on. For square tapered cranks like these, the 14mm nut I removed earlier will press the cranks back onto the spindle. These will slowly get tighter until the crank is fully seated, so keep going until you feel a noticeable increase in tightness.

I decided to ditch the rusty chain guard (I probably could have scraped the rust off with a wire brush or aluminum foil, but I think the bike looks better without it anyway). Time to put the bars and stem back in. It helps to put a little grease on the aluminum to keep it from seizing in place later on:

For bikes with stem shifters, slide the shifters back onto the stem and tighten the clamp down once the stem is properly positioned:

These brake levers have a screw inside that tightens them to the bars. I wanted to get rid of the dried up foam grips, so I loosened the brake lever screws and slid everything off the bars.

With the handlebars nice and clean, I repositioned the levers and tightened down the clamp screws:

Time to reinstall the brake calipers. Center the brake, then tighten down the 10mm nut that holds it on:

Reattach the cable to the levers by hooking them into the barrel. Make sure there are no frayed wires if you intend to reuse the original cables:

Now reattach the cables to the brake calipers:

Finally, adjust the saddle's position by loosening the clamp and re-tightening it once it's set up perfectly:

After I put the chain back on, the bike is almost finished:

The last and most important step is to test ride it. Check the shifters. Make sure the front derailleur doesn't rub the chain. Check that the rear derailleur doesn't overshoot the freewheel. Adjust the brakes so that they grab the rims strongly, but don't drag on either side.

French bikes often have special handlebars, handlebar stems, headsets, forks, and possibly even special pedals and freewheels. Keep these in mind in case you're looking for replacement parts. It's best to use the original French parts (except for cast aluminum AVA stems found on a lot of Peugeots. Those can break).

French Bike Teardown

Here's a late 70's Motobecane Nomade I recently brought home:

It almost looks rideable as is, but I would never trust a 35 year old bike without doing a little work on it first. I don't like this seat anymore...

I typically start removing the stuff on top first, and work my way down to the wheels. This bike has stem shifters, so I needed to loosen the clamp before the handlebars could come out:

Now I can loosen the stem bolt and remove the bars:

I guess I was pretty lucky that the aluminum stem actually came out. Sometimes they can chemically weld themselves in place.

Time to remove the fork. I was too lazy to grab my big adjustable wrench for the locknut, which is why you see me using channel lock pliers. Don't use them on a really nice bike...

The top nut is off, but now the brake hanger is in the way:

Off with the front wheel:

Now I can squeeze the brake pads together to get some slack in the brake cable, and slide it off the hanger:

Reflector, hanger, and spacer removed:

The top bearing race is the last piece to remove. It should just unscrew by hand, revealing the bearings underneath:

After the headset is taken off, the fork just slides out:

Removing the brake for cleaning:

Ewwwww...

Time to do the cranks. These covers unscrew with a quarter or a penny pretty easily:

Now you need a socket to fit the nut inside the crank (for square tapered cranks):

With the nut removed the crank still won't come off. You need this special tool:

Right crank removed, yay! Just repeat for the other side.

Bye bye rear wheel:

The chain needs some cleaning, so I used my special tool to remove it:

Now the bottom bracket needs some love. First remove the lockring (this one was actually pretty tough for once):

The adjustable cup might unscrew by hand, but in this case I had to use this method again:

If you own a bike shop you could use a Park Tool pin spanner, but the needle nose pliers get it done all the same. Here is the spindle removed:

The right side cup on a French bike will be normally threaded (not left hand threaded like most other bikes). On this bike that bearing cup was seized in place, so I left it alone. I'd rather not have it loosen up on me later anyway. 

Moving on, the brake cables can be disconnected from the levers fairly easily. You just need to unhook them from the barrel inside the lever:

Here is the frame as it sits now:

I didn't remove the derailleurs or cables because they actually seemed to move fine. These Huret derailleurs have pinch bolts that fray the end of the cable, so if you remove the cables then you don't get to reuse them (it's almost impossible to thread them back through the tiny pinch bolt again). If you ever worked on an old Schwinn then you'll know what I'm talking about. My next post will cover reassembling the bike in better working order. Cheers!

Derailleur Hanger Repair

Impacts to a bike's rear derailleur can bend the derailleur hanger, which is the piece that attaches it to the frame. Most mountain bikers have probably seen this happen, as well as anyone who routinely drops their bike on the drivetrain side:

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Notice the angle on the derailleur's cage? It might be tempting to just pull it back into shape, but that will only make things worse (you might bend the derailleur instead of hanger). The real solution is to remove the derailleur:

You usually only need a 5 or 6mm allen key to do this, and you don't need to remove the chain or the cable. Just let it hang while you fuss with the hanger:

Park Tool makes a very expensive alignment tool, and a competent bike shop mechanic would be able to do a precise job realigning the hanger, but an adjustable wrench works pretty well too:

I just gently bend it out until the derailleur lines up straight again. It helps to have a good feel for how metal bends, but just be careful and patient and you can probably get it straight:

I wouldn't do this to a high end racing bike, but for any normal bike this should be just fine. I've repeatedly bent the hanger on my Trek mountain bike without breaking it, so no worries on a steel hanger (heat treated aluminum might be a bit iffy though). The last step is to check the gear indexing and adjust the set screws if necessary.

Weird Bottom Bracket

I got an old Austrian made Sears cruiser and thought this was odd:

Only one crank has a cotter pin, while the rest acts like an American style bottom bracket in an English shell:

You can see the big nut that holds the bearings together like a one-piece BB. After removing it, you can see that the right crank and the spindle are one piece, and the shell has small press-fit cups inside: