Gazelle Jeugd Race II

The Gazelle Jeugd Race 24" as it should look like.
Looks much better with a decent saddle, pedals, brake levers and bar tape.

49T and 52T chain rings Dura Ace 10 mm pitch

Due to my own dumbness and some bad luck, I lost my 10 mm pitch chain ring.
But thanks to the great support of Neil, my British friend in Tokyo, I got this 49T replacement. For a very attractive price, like new and with a bunch of lovely stamps.
Now, the group set is complete again.


EDIT (2013/Sept/04): Lucky me! The postman brought back the missing 52 teeth chain ring, so now I have two, one with 49 and one with 52 teeth.

Gazelle Jeugd Race

I've just picked up a gorgeous 1980 Gazelle Jeugd Race bike. This 46 cm framed road bike with 24" tubular wheels is in a nice condition and will make a beautiful retro racer for one of my kids. The problems are: they don't ride that much and there are already several nice (retro and newer, road and MTB) kid bikes in my garage. On top of that: my son, who rides with my every now and then, is slowly getting too large for a road bike with 24" wheel size. But if I get the opportunity to buy such a lovely bike, I cannot resist. I will clean and restore it and see if the kids will ride it. Otherwise, someone else can do his junior a big favour.

Frame and fork: Full Reynolds 531c.
Hubs: Pelissier 36H.
Rims: Nisi tubular 36H.
Tubulars: Vittoria Junior 24"
Bars: 3ttt Tour de France, 38 cm o - o
Stem: SR (?) 6.5 cm.
Seat post: aluminium 27.2 mm.
Cranks: Ofmega 150 mm. w. steel ring 48T.
Pedals: Lyotard
BB-set: Sugino cups, Shimano axle 116 mm.

Wheels Dura Ace 10 track hubs to Alesa 913 clincher rims

Cut the rusty spokes of the old tubular wheels to separate the hubs from the Nisi rims. Disassembled and cleaned the hubs. Now I've got to polish all parts and put it together again with some new grease. Ball races and balls look excellent.

I've found a pair of clincher rims: Alesa 913 from Belgium, so that goes well together with the Superia frame kit.
The rims are NOS (new old stock) shiny silver colour aluminium, 36 holes. The only thing that worries me a little bit is, that these rims are a bit too new for the bike. I think the rims are from the late 1980, but that makes that everything is still within a time bracket of 10 years, which is acceptable. Alesa 913 rims are a little bit higher/deeper than flat, box section rims. I think I've used these rims in the late 1980s when our road team was sponsored by Vredestein and Alesa. The aero-ish rims without eyelets were absolutely terrible, but the more box section like rims with double eyelets were much better. We used them in road races and it was the hard anodised black/grey version. This silver version matches a lot better with the Superia frame with Dura Ace 10 series components.
It's very hard to find a pair of 36 hole clincher rims with unworn side walls from the late 1970. Most rims have been used on road biked, so brake signs are visible. Nearly all track wheels from that era have tubular rims, but for practical reasons I want clincher rims.

Spoke length calculators tell me that I need spokes of 288 mm. I've tried 290 mm, but that's far too long.
I'm going to order 286 mm and I'm pretty sure that thas is correct. (Edit: 286 mm wasn't available. I've ordered 285 mm and 287 mm. 285 mm was a bit too short and 287 was correct.
No idea if I will tie and solder the spokes. I'm already done that a couple of times. There's no real benefit, when you decide to do it, it mainly because of emotional and unlogical reasons. I will see.