Gazelle Finished (almost)

So I bought this Gazelle (unsure exactly what type) about 5 years ago off ebay at which point it was run down.

It had some friction downstem shifters and an old record rear dereilleur.

I took it out for a spin and the rear dereilleur was not correctly set up, catching on the rear wheel, and ripping out of the hanger. I briefly converted it to a SS to use as a play bike but it never really left the house.

I have never rebuilt a bike before but I have been scheming to get it back on the road with some brifters for under £100.. ...

First I had to sort out the rear hanger. It was buggered but the frame itself looked like it was aligned correctly.

I bought a rear dropout saver and drillbit and drilled out the hanger. This did not entirely work as the hanger was bent proper and so the rear dereilleur would not sit flush and also had a significant amount of play. So off came the rear hanger

and I attached a new hanger from SJS cycles.

Other problems included getting the seized bottom bracket off that I managed with a lot of elbow grease.

The next step was getting new cables. I bought the brifters, rear mech and rear casette all of the classified forum and the rest new from different stores. I already had some wheels, tyres and a front mech. I also had or borrowed most of the tools. It has been a lot of trial and error getting everything together and working and I have still got a few things to do which I may need to ask your help with but I am really happy with the final product.

All in all the build has cost me £81.25. Ongoing issues are:

1. The indexing is slightly off. The brifters appear to be 9 speed and I have an 8 speed rear casette. I guess in time I will upgrade to a 9 speed and this will then index slickly, at the moment it sometimes does not index correctly but I can live with that.

2. I would be keen to get a triple (or a compact) front chainset as 39-23 is a little to big for my legs going uphill having just got back into cycling. Could I put a compact on this bike do you think? Anyone fancy swapping a campagnolo chorus 170 for a compact or triple?

3. The bits that you put the outer cabling into the frame are too small for the campagnolo rear dereilleur (see arrows on picture) and too big for the stell frame. Any idea where I could source some metal ones of the correct size?

1. Need to clean up some rust spots.
   
   

Thanks for looking. My main amazement is that I managed to do this without breaking it!

Any idea how I find out which Gazelle frame this is?

Try searching here: http://jvs.webklik.nl/page/homepage

try here : http://jvs.webklik.nl/page/gazelle

Looks like a Trim Trophy frame, as used in the Gazelle Tour de l'Avenir model or sold as frame only.

So first trip out was a little bit of a false start. I managed around 15km before the back wheel stopped going round. It appears that there is very little room between the casette and the small inner bolt that connects the new hanger. The casette head had come loose (which may have been me not tightening enough admittedly). This photo shows that there is basically no room:

I got it home (long walk) and managed to find some spacers for a 9 speed casette that are slightly narrower than the 8 speed campy ones. It opened up the gap to a few mm:

I hope this works. Any comments on it would be a real help. Is this a normal size gap or too small? Would a small spacer to pull the frame out slightly be better?

Putting in a little spacer on the axle and spreading the frame would be good. Putting 9 speed spacers in there will effect your shifting I assume. But if it works then it works and leave it!