I'd been jonesing for an BIC orange Motobecane Team Champion since I first saw one in 1974.
Jump ahead to 2007, a dark blue and chrome 1982 Team Champion frame came up on eBay.
I was high bidder and opted for a local pickup. When I met with the seller, I could tell from 10 feet away that the fork was wrong. It had a Tange replacement fork!
The first thing that I did when the seller handed me the frame was to feel under the top and down tubes. Sure enough there were ripples. I reached an agreement with the seller that I would have it checked out by a local frame builder and then decide what to do.
I took it to Ed Litton and we put it on his layout table. The frame was straight so I negotiated a substantial refund from the seller and kept it.
I was so bummed out that it sat for several years before I started to assemble it. The first problem I ran into was the Tange forks were made for 27" wheels with lots of rake and clearance. It raised the front of the frame up over 1/2" and changed the head tube angle to 76°. It sat for another few years until I came upon a Gitane fork that matched the original Team Champion.
I finished building the bike, rode it a few times but found the head tube was now 75° but still too squirrely so it sat some more. I rode it again a few times recently and decided to have the head tube angle bent back out to the original 74°.
But wait.... Last December I came across a 1985-86 LOOK Bernard Hinault Reynolds 753 bike with a Mavic gruppo at a LBS. These are very rare. There were only 250 or 500?? of these frames made.
I asked the owner how much and he said that he didn't want to sell it that he was going to restore it... Well money talks and it was late in the day and I didn't LOOK the horse in the mouth too carefully....
Had I done my due diligence, I would have/should have passed....
When I got it home, I found the seat post was stuck. When I started working on it the BB and just about everything else was frozen too!
The rusty spokes should have been a give away! The PO was some kind of poser wanna be triathlete. I doubt that anything on the bike had ever been lubed or adjusted.
Some people shouldn't be allowed near anything more mechanical than a
ROCK.
Maybe he/she should be swimming in a black wet suit out near the Farallon Islands where great whites feeding on seals get eaten by orcas!
verktyg
