These manholes were used for a fork locking mechanism. My mother's French-bought Peugeot from 1973 had the same thing with a lock installed. It was an alarmingly simple anti-theft device for other times.
Steven Maasland
Moorestown, NJ
> >And speaking of wacky, what's up with that big ol' manhole cover in the
top
> >of the downtube lug? I suppose it is for lubing the lower headset race,
but
> >why's it so big? The little grease fitting on the back of the headtube
on
> >so many Italian and English bikes does the job with so much less metal
and
> >extra fabrication complexity.
>
> considering that grease fittings were used on other
> french bikes that ive seen, im almost tempted to
> say oil port? looks a lot like the oil hole cover on a
> sturmey archer hub, and it would give you the
> ability to dump oil from that point to either the lower
> headset race, and to the bb as well...
>
> tell me if you think im off my rocker, but stranger
> things have happened in the world of bike design...
>
> ive seen bikes before that have used the frame
> tubes as oil reservoirs...
>
> -joel
>
> --
> joel metz : magpie@messengers.org : http://www.blackbirdsf.org/
> bike messengers worldwide : ifbma : http://www.messengers.org/
> po box 191443 san francisco ca 94119-1443 usa
> ==
> i know what innocence looks like - and it wasn't there,
> after she got that bicycle...
> _______________________________________________
---