Vintage Andre Bertin – Cold setting

A thing with vintage bikes is that they tend to have narrow rear drop-outs compared with modern wheel standards. This means that modern wheels will not fit. This will be OK if you want to refurbish to original specification, however with this renovation, because of the bikes history it’s not really viable as so much

Headset – oh dear

I started disassembling the the bike to inspect the condition of the moving parts. A critical component is the headset. Basically attaches the forks to the frame and enables you to turn steer the wheel. The first thing I did was to remove the stem – I was relieved that it wasn’t fused to the

Andre Bertin road bike history – from original owner

When I collected the bike from David, the original owner he told me a few things about the bike. It was bought for him by his mother in November 1961, his 15th birthday. It was bought from Donaldson’s in Dundee. It was originally a pale lilac colour and the decals were originally of the scripted

1962 Andre Bertin Bike – Let’s have a closer look and see what we have here

I got the bike home and was excited about taking a closer look. But before then, it was time to take it to the park opposite my home to get some ‘as found’ photographs. The bike had not been used since the late 90’s so it was likely to be a bit grubby. Actually, considering