1970s Gazelle Sprinter - A Fixed Gear Rescue Project

Hi!
A couple of weeks ago I found the rolling chasis of a Gazelle Sprinter bike abandoned on the street. The stem already unprofessionally removed and in an overall state of decline I decided to attempt a rescue...





My knowledge of Gazelle and in particular of the Sprinter modell still is insufficient but as far as I know it is basically a Raleigh Grand Prix labeled as Gazelle Sprinter and probably build in 1970.

As I am usually riding singlespeed/fixed gear bikes only, my idea of course was to transform the Gazelle into a sort of scorcher for light gravel and off road riding. So, the motto of course is:



It took me a while to remove all the parts hanging around leaving only the bare frame with some remaining parts on it.




I do not posses a tool for removing headsets, so this had to wait until my next with to my local bike shop but I wasn't concerned about it. More so, the crank and bottom bracket had already formed an alliance and I had to use brute force to get them off the frame in order to have access to the rest of the BB.





After this operation went successfully I attempted to remove the BB at the bike shop and with some help of a srew clamp I was able to get it out and the rest of the headset removed.




Unfortunately, it was only now that I discovered that the bridge between the seat stays had broken off at the soldered point.



But than again its nothing I am really worried about and I will get it re-brazed in the next weeks. Till then, I have a front wheel to build and some more parts to sort and hopefully with the first snow here in Berlin I will have it ready to rock n' road :xmas-big-grin:

For now, I wish all of you some good and relaxing days ahead!

Cheers

Nice. I wish I could find bikes in the street!

Amazing find! Really looking forward to see how this pans out. Good luck with it all.

wired99":3v23jacb said:

Amazing find! Really looking forward to see how this pans out. Good luck with it all.

Click to expand...

+ 1

Thanks!
My next step will be trying to remove the wedge and the left over of the stem from steerer tube ... Probably I have to find a new fork for it (which wouldn't be that bad, as the fork is pretty heavy).

Best wishes!

Re:

Great find, will follow this for sure!

Well, I was curious how the frame would look with two wheels and CX tires. I like it, and it at least seems that the bike could fit me.



Unfortunately the forks appears to be toast. The wedge can not be removed and the left over of the stem inside the tube is completly stuck. But if everything goes well I'll receive a matching 531 fork from a period correct Raleigh...

After a long wait I finally received the new forks. Matching quite good and especially I finally could test the stem and bar combos: I had to dismiss a Salsa Woodchippper, due to the very long toptube. The current is quite comfy but doesn't look scorcher like, so I've to get a nice pair of moustache or even Lauterwasser bars...

Re:

A to c on the second pair of forks looks quite a bit shorter, maybe it’s the fork blades themselves as the tyre looks much closer to down tube....

The fitment looks much better with the original forks, and I would imagine the handling would be less twitchy than the new pair look!

Yes, now where you mention it... I'll meassure the ACs but maybe the non-original fork has less trail? Anyway, I am not expecting to find a new pair of the original forks ...