John Audette wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> Can anyone help be with a wee bit of history of Eddy Merckx frames?
> I've just bought an older frame and I've been unable to track down
> much history other than what's on Sheldon Brown's site. Is there
> any way to tell if an older frame was built by De Rosa? Where were
> they built after De Rosa built the first ones?
>
> My frame has two decal bands on the seat tube with championship
> color bands, maps of Italy and France, and writing that says "Mexico
> 49 km 431 1972" obviously commemorating Eddy's 1 hour record -
> do all the early bikes have this? Does it in any way help to date the
> frame?
>
> The bottom bracket shell has "E 1256" on one side and "G 7" on
> the other side - don't know if this can offer any additional info.
>
> Any thing that someone could provide would be very much
> appreciated. I can't wait to build this baby up and take it out
> for a spin!
John, Eddy started manufacturing his own frames in 1980 after having Ugo De Rosa's help in setting up his factory.
Sounds like yours is after 1980 by the decals you described. He changed the paint schemes usually every year so if you look in Winning Magazines for instance for the Gita (USA importer) ads you could probably narrow down the year of your frame.
There is quite a bit in the list archives at:
http://www.bikelist.org/
Search result on "Merckx" (813 matches)
http://search.bikelist.org/
Chuck Schmidt L.A.
.