Décathlon Cobra

For a number of European cheapskates searching for readily available frames that are not terrible but still cheap, the Cobra line of bikes from the 1990s made by/for Decathlon are a very good bet. Most of them use the most common standards and can come in great tubing. The downside is the sizing : a lot of low-end Cobras are very poorly sized, usally 2 to 3 different sizes for a single grade of frame.

Regardless, this page stands to give as much information about these frames as possible.

History

Decathlon made bikes a long time before making the Cobra series of bikes. Decathlon first started making bikes in the late 1980s, with few different models of bikes that all had different names and were made by others. But the genesis of the Cobra line of bikes is the "Vitace" line of bikes. They were largely identical to the "first generation" of Cobras, with the latter keeping the naming convention of the Vitace. Some of the Vitace line of bikes had an additional brazing, namely "Decathlon" written in the steel. [Segment on the cobra line]. And after that came the R-series of bikes. The Cobras don't have much reason to stand in the face of performance, they never were raced and Decathlon was an enthusiast-level bike seller. But in 2000, Decathlon struck a deal with the AG2R La Mondiale team and provided them with bikes. The only similarity with the consumer bikes was the branding on the down tube as the race bikes were made in reality by Cyfac[source]. I mention this because Decathlon probably didn't have their own bike factories so to speak, their bikes had to be assembled somewhere and Cyfac (and others) are prime target when you're aiming to pinpoint who made certain of their frames. Not their low-end but their high-end Cobra bikes.

Visuals

There are at least 3 different "generations" of visuals used for the Cobra line of bikes. The First generation of Cobras are easy to spot as their decals are usually unicolour (very often white), making for cheap looking bikes.The Second generation of Cobras are harder to spot as they visually are an inbetween from the Second and Last generation. Their decals are more colourful but they still are fairly simple. They also have more marketing terms on them, clearly saying what kind of steel was used : Hi-Ten, CrMo and the likes. The last generation of Cobras have the most refined decals, they are visually class : being sober but keeping an insight into how high the grade of the bike is. The most telling sign is a two-tone decal where the number designing the grade is written.

Bikes

The nomenclature is simple : the bigger the number, the better.

Cobra 500

Tubeset: Unnamed Hi-Ten steel

Fork: Unnamed Hi-Ten steel

BB Thread: BSA

Seatpost diameter:

Dropouts: Vertical with eyelets

Sizes available:

Cobra 520

Tubeset: Unnamed Hi-Ten steel

Fork: Unnamed Hi-Ten steel

BB Thread: BSA

Seatpost diameter: 25,4mm

Dropouts: Short horizontal with eyelets

Sizes available:

Cobra 540

Tubeset: Columbus Gara tre tubi

Fork: Unnamed CrMo steel

BB Thread: BSA

Seatpost diameter:

Dropouts:

Sizes available: S/M, M/L, XL

Cobra 560

Tubeset: Columbus Thron tre tubi

Fork: Unnamed CrMo steel

BB Thread: BSA

Seatpost diameter: 26,8mm

Dropouts: Vertical

Sizes available: S/M, M/L, XL

Cobra 580

Tubeset: Deddaciai

Fork:

BB Thread:

Seatpost diameter:

Dropouts:

Sizes available:

Cobra 600

Tubeset: Columbus Gara tre tubi

Fork:

BB Thread:

Seatpost diameter:

Dropouts:

Sizes available:

Cobra 720

Thron custom

Cobra 740

1st generation

made by TVT

2nd generation

White, Genius

3rd generation

Yellow, Genius

4th generation

White, Genius custom

Cobra 760

Altec

Cobra 1000

Tubeset:

Fork:

BB Thread:

Seatpost diameter:

Dropouts:

Sizes available: