Jan,
Your fact-finding efforts into the rides of G. Gambillon do underscore the difficulties of historic authentication and make for interesting "mystery" reading. I take it you undertook some rebuilding of the track bike(?), if that was the one you brought back to the states.
Regarding an earlier post, you explained how the Huret mounting bolt(s) allowed adjustment of the freeplay at the B-pivot. I had always wondered why my Trek710, with it's Duopar derailer, made wheel removal so difficult as the derailer didn't pivot at all with the bolt torqued down and the wheel was thus barely removeable. I checked the bolt and find it to be hollow, but with no internal threads. Any idea how the pivoting action is supposed to be effected on this one? There's a washer between dropout and hanger that looks a bit less than original to me, so perhaps the bolt is stepped and was to bottom out against the dropout instead of the derailer body, with some long-lost positioning hardware intended to take up the space between the derailer and hanger?
I've finally made it to the last page of my first BQ and am pleasantly surprised by it's content. I found the article on shimmy interesting, in that I've always suspected these oscillations are as much akin to the energy exchange of a pendulum as that of a spring, and also that my Trek 520 steers the way it does in large part to the use of the needle-bearing headset. The balance of Vol.6, #3 made for a very well-rounded publication.
David Snyder
> CR listers,
>
> I apologize for - again! - posting private messages onlist. I will be more
> careful checking my cc in the future. I am sorry to have wasted your time.
>
> Also, somebody pointed out that my first post about authentication said
> "In many cases, a builder will want to spoil your fun." Obviously, there
> is a "NOT" missing in that sentence.
>
> And for those who now wonder about the mysterious "curved-tube" bike, it's
> an Herse track bike used by G. Gambillon to win 6 consecutive French
> pursuit championships. We photographed it for a future feature, and of
> course, I did not want to give that away prematurely. Oh well... no big
> harm done.
>
> The authentication of that one was simple - it came directly from the
> Herse shop to its present home. There aren't many Herse track bikes, and
> each is pretty unique in size and features.
>
> The only question was the original color. Lyli Herse was certain that it
> always was the current, candy-apple red color (with no lettering!), saying
> "Genevieve's bike always was red." However, G. Gambillon remembered it to
> be blue. During an overhaul, blue paint was found on the inside of the BB
> threads, confirming that it was blue at some stage. In any case, the B&W
> photos show a lighter color, and the red had too much metal flake in it
> for a late 1960s Herse... (I believe Lyli Herse mixed up the track and the
> road bike. The latter indeed was red, but a finer metal flake, and it did
> have lettering and lining.)