Thanks Chuck. As an email publisher myself you would think that I would have thought to look in the archives in the first place. It's easy to forget what a resource an email list archive can be.
Cheers, John
On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 02:36 PM, Chuck Schmidt wrote:
> 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/
> ?SearchString=Merckx&Scope=classicrendezvous>
>
> Chuck Schmidt
> L.A.
>
> .