Greetings from France

[Barkit]

Hi everyone,

I've been following this site for quite a while now, sick builds, all in all very inspirational...

I've recently acquired an old bike from the 20s-30s I believe and made a rat rod out of it.
I'll post it in the dedicated forum subsection.

Cheers.

 

[LukeTheJoker]

Welcome!

Luke.

 

[Nagant]

Welcome aboard. Seems like the European membership has really been growing this year. Which is a good thing. You guys have bikes and items that are commonly found over here.

 

[Barkit]

Welcome aboard. Seems like the European membership has really been growing this year. Which is a good thing. You guys have bikes and items that are commonly found over here.

Funny that you say this, I guess this is mostly due to importers then.

I'm far from being a specialist about custom bikes and I may be totally wrong but I do have the feeling you guys tend to have more wild and crazy stuff on your side of the Atlantic (after all most if not all of this custom culture came from there) while here in Europe we have more "traditional" bikes and parts.

Still some of the parts you are using are a bit hard to find here. But it is true that custom bikes are getting more and more popular in the EU.

 

[Nagant]

I was speaking more about some of the vintage cycling items and bikes available in Europe.

 

[Barkit]

I was speaking more about some of the vintage cycling items and bikes available in Europe.

Ok I may have misunderstood you then.

I guess a typo made you skip the negation here:

You guys have bikes and items that are commonly found over here.

and you actually meant:

You guys have bikes and items that are not commonly found over here.

is that right?

Then I couldn't agree more .

 

[Nagant]

Yes and no. I agree with everything you are saying but what I mean is there are vintage types of bikes and accessories available over there that are not common here. Like rod brake bikes, Dutch style bikes, various French made bikes........ just some examples.

 

[Barkit]

Absolutely, it is true that we have quite some bike antiques such as rod brakes, spoon brakes or wooden rims.
At the same time, I realize that in America you have a broad range of amazing springer forks with very different mechanisms. This is something that you hardly find on European bikes.

All in all it is quite good as you said because it brings a differents approach to custom bicycles and makes up for more diversity. As a European I must say that custom bicycles from the new world always look fresh, unusual and thus inspiring because the starting material and influences are very different from what we are used to see.

 

[The Renaissance Man]

Welcome!

 

[Ichoptop]

What does the custom scene look like in France. Is it just old bikes with things bolted on or are there frame builders and full customs?

 

[Barkit]

Well, I'm new to the scene and I can't tell much about it. There is a french guy here (Irzouts) that does pretty crazy things:



His blog is definitely worth a look.

Apart from that, there is at least one online forum for french customs: http://custombrigad.com/

Overall I'd say that the custom culture is getting more and more common over here. There are definitely several skilled welders making crazy bikes (another example here) and full customs.

 

[whitefiretiger]

Welcome to RRB.

Checked out your bike and its killer.

I'm not sure what things are like over there as far as us bikes but here there are tons of older French road bikes (1970s give or take I'm not a road bike fan so not positive on exact age) that I see, fix, or take apart weekly.

 

[Barkit]

Welcome to RRB.

Checked out your bike and its killer.

I'm not sure what things are like over there as far as us bikes but here there are tons of older French road bikes (1970s give or take I'm not a road bike fan so not positive on exact age) that I see, fix, or take apart weekly.

Thanks a lot!

Well I may be wrong but from my experience I would say that frames such as western flyers, schwinn, spaceliner, etc. are extremely seldom here. When I look at the fresh finds section of the forum, it seems that the average find would be considered kind of exceptional in France (Europe?) due to this rarity.

 

[whitefiretiger]

A lot of the bike that come up on the fresh finds tend to be 1960s or older & I would imagen they would be rare as hens teeth over there.
I was thinking that being in the 70s and newer French road bikes are fairly common here (I volunteer at a bicycle co-op and I would say as far as road bikes go we get 1 French one to about every 5-7 american/Chinese built ones).
Thought maybe 70s & newer us bikes may pop up a bit over there.

 

[Barkit]

I volunteer at a bicycle co-op

I also do

Well, I not a specialist but from my experience if we do get American bikes, then it will mostly be mountain bikes (hence quite recent - late 80s early 90s not older I think) and regarding road bikes, they will look pretty "classic" if we have any (nothing to be enthusiast about compared to the average french or dutch sytle frame we usually receive).

Unfortunately I've never seen original frames with nice curves and original features such as those I mentioned in my earlier post here.

 

[whitefiretiger]

I also do

Well, I not a specialist but from my experience if we do get American bikes, then it will mostly be mountain bikes (hence quite recent - late 80s early 90s not older I think) and regarding road bikes, they will look pretty "classic" if we have any (nothing to be enthusiast about compared to the average french or dutch sytle frame we usually receive).

Unfortunately I've never seen original frames with nice curves and original features such as those I mentioned in my earlier post here.

That's too bad.

I'm sure if we could figure out a reasonable way to ship you a bike there's plenty around that are not highly desired here (can get some cool early 70s cruiser bikes for $20-40 USD) that would be loved by you. Not sure I want to know how bad shipping would be tho.

 

[Barkit]

That sounds good, I will keep that in mind for when I will find room for an additional bike!

That is a pretty good price indeed. I'm afraid that from what I found on Ebay, shipping costs are prohibitive however...

 

[whitefiretiger]

Yea that's why I said if we could find a reasonable way to get it to you.

As an example this Huffy is up for sale for $35

 

[Barkit]

Yea that's why I said if we could find a reasonable way to get it to you.

As an example this Huffy is up for sale for $35

Haha excellent but you will have ship it with a beehive springer fork ! It is one of the other amazing stuff you have that are too rare here!

 

[whitefiretiger]

A springer fork would massively increase the shipping cost as most weigh a lot. Can you get the old Schwinn style springers there? Kind of like the one on this bike?

There are lots of websites that sell them. Maybe they can ship to France at a reasonable price.