PhotonDon

Yours looks like mine. My dad and I bought it new in July 73. Rd is marked 72. Same Pivo bar/stem, Differences: Mine came with an Ideale saddle (I think, definitely not Brooks, but leather), TA rings were 50-40. I ran a 28t freewheel but it never worked well. Always a great rider. Still hanging in the garage. Now a slight derail- when did the script MOTOBECANE on the downtube change to block letters? I always thought it changed for 73 models and that mine MIGHT be a 72. And one last thing. Mine had 531 on all tubes, that's a fact. Fix it up and ride the heck out of it.

bikemig 

Good to know about the tubing. I'm not surprised that the RD didn't handle 28 teeth well. Some people have managed to get a campy NR RD to work with 28 teeth but the max cog is supposed to be 26 and the chain wrap 26 as well. I think I'll stick to a 14-26 and just run smaller chain rings up front to get some better climbing gears.

bikemig 

I was out of town last week riding the Tour de Nebraska (good ride in western NE) and didn't make much progress. I picked out a wheelset. I have a set of alloy wheels with ambrosio rims and campagnolo tipo large flange hubs I've decided to use. The cones and cups are in great shape and they are certainly period correct for this bike. I'm running pasela tires at 70 psi. There was some rust on the spokes on the rear wheel but I got a lot of that out using aluminum foil dipped in water. There are a few threads on this and this is a good wiki entry on it:

https://www.wikihow.com/Remove-Rust-from-Chrome

Here is the rear wheel which has some rust issues on the spokes
:

bikemig 

The frame is straight with no dings. The paint was a bit beat. It has a fine white crackling speckle running through it I'm guessing from too much such exposure. It also had a lot of scratches. I touched it up with black paint as well as a bit of clear nail polish in some areas. I then waxed up the frame. I like the patina on this bike and it cleaned up pretty nicely:

unworthy1

The paint on earlier '70s Motos (at least these GR and GJ models) seems especially prone to crackling. Check out the thread that Frank the Welder did on his yellow/black Moto restoration, a quite pretty bike where he retained and embraced that crackled effect. In the fine art world this is referred to as "craclique" most often when over-varnish on oil paintings crackles with aging...in that case it's prized and desired.

bikemig 

Good to know about the paint job on old motos aging more or less like fine wine,

I was wondering why the parts were so nice and shiny on the bike and the paint so crackled. I reckon this bike was largely a garage queen that was roughly handled (which explains all the scratches and why the parts were so clean while the frame looks a bit sun baked).

I remember Frank's restore thread but can't seem to find it. Too bad, he does not seem to be around anymore on BF. I learned a lot from his threads.

unworthy1

Yeah, great pity that Frank the Welder has left this forum but maybe he'll be back one day! This thread has one post (#27) that shows a few pix of his crackled yellow Moto GR but I know he made a much more detailed write-up before this:
https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...-record-2.html
maybe searching by his handle as he wrote it (ftwelder) would give more results....will have to try that.

bikemig 

So I found the thread: https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...rd-1970-a.html

The paint needed a lot of work on his bike but looks non-crackled. That's OK, I'm embracing the patina on my bike, .

audiomagnate

That link doesn't work for me.

unworthy1

Ah! Yes that IS the thread on @ftwelder and NO I completely mis-remembered that he "embraced the craclique", in fact he repainted the frame! And quite a good job, too!
I think I was recalling the "BEFORE" pics that showed how crackled that paint was?
Anyhow, here's another link that "should work":
https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-v...rd-1970-a.html

bikemig 

I took advantage of the holiday to scoot out of work early and I wrapped up the bike yesterday, July 3, before taking it out on a 30 mile ride today. I'm really happy with how the bike came out. First up, 2 pics from the MUP ride:

bikemig 

I'm still waiting on replacement Reynolds 531 stickers and I'd love to find TA stickers for the cranks but those may be difficult to find.

I mainly relied on the original parts:

(1) Campagnolo nuovo record derailleurs;
(2) TA cyclotourist crank but I swapped the original 52/40 rings for 46/36 rings;
(3) Campagnolo record 2 bolt seatpost and Brooks pro saddle;
(4) Pivo bar and stem;
(5) Weinmann 610 brakes and levers with honest to goodness real weinmann gum rubber hoods and kool stop pads;
(6) Stronglight competition headset
(7) Shimano 5 speed 14-28 freewheel and KMC chain;
(8) Lyotard 460 pedals;
(9) Campagnolo Tipo hubs and Ambrosio 27 inch clincher rims;
(10) Panasonic Pasela 27 x 1 and 1/4 protite tires, Newbaum cotton tape, Velo Orange "retro" water bottle cage, and Cateye bar end plugs.

I overhauled the bike and replaced all the bearings with grade 25 bearings. All the bearing surfaces are in fine shape. The campy NR RD can clear the 14-28 freewheel just fine but I had to shove the wheel all the way back in the drop outs to make that work. Still I like the gearing with a 46/36 up front and a 14/28 in the rear. I might install a 13-26 though as that will give me a better gear progression and a higher top end.

bikemig 

bikemig 

I built this Motobecane Grand Record in 2019 after finding it on the local Craigslist. I tweaked it this Spring. The original stem was too short (it was a 9 cm) and the bars too narrow (38 cm). I found a 12 cm CTA stem and a 41 cm Franco Italia Philippe bar. The bike rides a heck of a lot better with the right bar and stem. I also swapped out the Lyotard 460 pedals for a pair of Atom 600 pedals. This bike came stock with Atom 700 pedals.

I tweaked the original gearing a bit to ride the local trails. There are a fair number of short 10% grades on my favorite rides. I'm running a 46/36 up front and a 14-26 in the rear. The top gear of 89 inches isn't great but the low gear of 37.5 inches lets me spin up those 10% grades. Plus since I mainly ride by myself, I can't get really get dropped because of that 89 inch high gear, .

I also finally got around to restoring the Reynolds 531 stickers and the TA crank stickers. I want to give a shout out to deux jambes since he supplied me with the TA crank stickers and the REG red toe strap buttons to complete the bike, . Thank you.

The paint has crackled so this bike is a bit of an ugly duckling but it is mechanically sound and rides great.

bikemig 

It's funny how you have to ride a bike for a while before you figure out what the "right" build is. What I love about this bike is how much room it has for fat tires so I decided to mod it for gravel riding. I decided to go with 700c wheels and 700 x 35c Schwalbe Marathon Mondial tires. I also changed the gearing. I'm running a Suntour rear derailleur and 50/36 rings on a Nervar 50.4 bcd crank with a 14-28 5 speed freewheel. The bike rides beautifully on rough roads and good roads.

SurferRosa

bikemig, any way we can wean you away from all these chain link fences and cluttering bike racks? Your bikes deserve better!

bikemig 

You're right, those are lazy pics. I tend to use that fence as the sun tends to be good there but it makes for a cluttered background. The Schwalbe Marathon Mondials really helped the bike handle the gravel as compared to the Panaracers PTs I had been using; the wider ranging gearing was a big help as well.

oneclick 

You need to look harder.

The french cones have a (much) poorer finish; even Tipo cones are better.

bikemig 

Agreed that the campy hubs were better but you'd be unlikely to notice the difference when riding, right? The Normandy luxe hubs had their problems for sure (difficult to overhaul since the dust caps were not meant to be removed, the cones were not long lasting) but they do ride nicely if everything is working properly.

Kabuki12

Nice job a your GR . I built up a later model Gran Sprint a while back with pretty much the same set up. The bike I have is a couple ticks below the GR but rides like a dream . I was able to run a 28 tooth low with Campagnolo NR derailleurs and 52/40 chain rings. I just moved the axel stops back and it shifts fine . I am also running 27” x 1” Pasela tires on Rigida alloy rims andCampagnolo Record HF hubs. Your bike looks amazing and I’m sure you’ll get many happy miles! Joe

cqlink 

Depends on your cleaning/ polishing ability I guess.

While I don't ride over 100 miles a week, I still can't discern any difference between the Normandy hubs and my Campy high flange hubs. Yes, if I had a choice, I'd go with Campy because of residual resale value (I generally keep bikes for a year or two) but I can't point to anything in terms of ride quality that places a premium on the Campy hubs.

kroozer 

I have had 4 sets of Normandy Competition hubs, and on 3 of them the rear cones gave out while the front units lasted much better. I rate them below Tipos, at least where durability is concerned, although the good set spins very nicely.
I have several vintage racers with 42-52 chainrings and Campy NR derailleurs, and I have always been able to run 14-28 freewheels by moving the RD all the way back in the dropout. For Campy dropouts that means removing the screws, but I never found those very useful anyway.