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Good to hear and If you already know all the below completely ignore me.
I suspect said previous owner has been marched off into the desert with a company of the French Foreign Legion as punishment but I was thinking more about threads and diameters like the pedal threads, cranktool threads, BB and headset threads and the stem diameter.
Also don't forget there's Simplex about under different names like Spidel and Gipiemme if you look and I'm sure a saw a long cage alloy bodies Simplex rear mech on ebay recently for a sensible price.
I built the all French Meral in my signature up using as much Spidel as I could find.[/quote]
Ah right I'm with you. Sorry for the dumb moment there

Yeah the stem and headset and bottom bracket are all to be very carefully recycled

Weirdly the existing cranks have English threads so I might change those so I can use a lovely set of Atoms with French threads.
Just been to have a look at the Meral! C'est genial ca!
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In serious need of therapy (or a bigger garage)
MTB ’94 Dave Yates Diablo custom; ’92 Raleigh Diablo Ti; ?? Zinn Z Classic; '90 Saracen Tufftrax
Road '16 Viner Mitus; '11 Ridley X-Bow; nameless winter bike; '91 Barron 653; '00 (ish) Bottecchia Columbus Brain; '13 On One Pompino (living in Holland); '70s Springfield Special
Projects (too many) ’84 Raleigh 531 (custom); ’82 Gazelle Champion Mondial; '91 Orange Clockwork; 93 Orange Clockwork; ’87 Peugeot ANC Halfords (fake); ’74 Gitane Country; ’75 Gitane Tour de France.