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Matisse
@Dcls
Hi,
After reading some posts on the forum during the past years, I decided to create my first topic.
I'm French and I live in Paris, but I'm originally a coutryside guy from Lyon area.
I own 'several' bikes with a focus on the 90s.
I'll start with the last frame I got.
Actually, when I got it, it was a complete bike assembled with a 700 fork (most of the rest was basically junk) but that frame...
The 650 fork wasn't listed but the seller told me he would check AND the D-day I had the pleasant surprise to see the original fork next to the bike!
After this good surprise, I had a bad one still with the fork: one of its 'legs' was bended...
Anyway, I brought it to a workshop to fix that.
Then, I usually like to keep the paint that came with the frame (I also never did a paintjob before) but when I got it, I immediately had the feeling that it came from the (famous for some people) Cyfac company that produced the "Maxi Sports" frames which I fancy a lot.
That feeling has been confirmed with the marks on the bottom bracket and fork steerer tube : "BL 1 90 390".
Regarding the Cyfac frame marks, "1 90 390" are easy: It was a primary (i.e. not a spare ) frame made in 1990 with the serial number 390.
And the remaining characters "BL" were the rider initials.
Maybe the frame overall shape will bring some nostalgy:
So I checked the Castorama team in 1990 and 1991 (in case the frame was build in late 1990 ; 1989 was Super U) and the only match I've found was Bjarne Riis also known as Bjarne Lykkegård.
But it felt wrong: the first letter was usually for the family name, plus Bjarne Riis is tall.
So I dug and found that in 1990 the young Laurent Brochard (who became World Champion later) was in the junior team "Antony Berny Cycliste" of Cyrille Guimard, head of Castorama team!
That's why I decided to give the frame its original color back ("blanc nacré", "pearl white", "diamant weiss".... you name it) and a proper first set of decals.
Cheers.