I just bought a Mercier on ebay, item # 110435187254 . The vendor didn't know enough to answer questions very helpfully and the photos were terrible, making bidding a bit risky. I scanned the internet for pictures of touring Merciers to see if I could find anything with a brazed-on saddlebag support and other things like this one and drew a blank.
I have wanted a Mercier for a while, so took a chance thinking that the worst I could do was pay a bit too much for the parts - the pictures show Record cranks, Record brake calipers with the wrong adjusters, Campy gearlever, a headset that I mistakenly thought was Super Record (it's a Mirage - literally and figuratively) and the vendor said the gear was also Campy (turns out to be a first generation Super Record).
I think the frame must be first tier, or close to it, with drilled Campagnolo dropouts and a brazed-on tab for a race number, but with all these additional braze-ons for bag support, generator, front light, rear brake cable stops and fenders. The good news is that the stem and Campy seat post are not stuck and the BB threads are good. I haven't had the fork off yet, so I don't understand how come the steerer is English threaded. The cranks are undated but the derailleur is dated 1977 which is a plausible date for the frame judging from photos I have seen (there are some good ones on the velosvintage blog that someone drew our attention to recently).
I would really appreciate guidance on a couple of things. Having decided to keep this and renovate it, I want to remove the add-ons. It all seems to have been done competently with no distortion of the tubes, but I am wondering whether to unbraze it with heat or whether it is better to use a hacksaw for a rough cut and then grind/file down the remnants. Does anyone have any experience of this? Seems to me that there is a risk of damage either way.
The other thing is that race Merciers of this era have a foil "Service des Courses" headbadge that looks really hard to reproduce -- does anybody know if a replica is available? Even good photos would help. Has anyone out there got a Mercier of this age?
Many thanks
Hugh Thornton
Cheshire, England