Classic & Vintage - Odd AD Puch Question

I was looking at an '82 AD Puch Pacifica and was told it had 531 tubing. When reviewing the '82 Catalog (http://bulgier.net/pics/bike/Catalogs/AustroDaimler/) it specifies Chromo as the tubing. Anyone ever hear of such a discrepency?

I'm not buying it either way, just curious what people thought about this. The guy doesn't seem like the type to lie (though possible) and it definitely had a Reynolds sticker on it.

All of the time. Are you sure the one for sale is a 1982? On the bikes I buy, the sellers rarely/never get the year or size right. Specs on most bikes changed every year, often dramatically. Many times the specs got better, other times they got worse.

And even if that info is all correct, catalogs are often wrong. Realize Puch most likely wrote the specs in that catalog MONTHS before production started, so changes were often made between the time the catalog was printed and the bikes were built. Something as simple as a response to a move by a competitor, or a deal on some tubing, or whatever, and things changed.

Now if it is a repaint, then all bets are off.

Thanks wrk. No, I'm pretty sure the paint is original. That is actually one reason I decided against it, it just isn't a very attractive bike - and the color matches what was written in the catalog. Odd, I'll keep this in mind going forward, I guess my skepticism just got the better of me.

Probably is because they don't know what in the world tubing were going to use in the bikes, so to leave the possibility to use whatever some companies just cited the tubing as "chromo". For the record some 531 is not butted but straight gauge, some used just the main triangle as 531 and all the other stuff was just chromo tubing.

With Raleigh and others manufacturers for example, in some low end to medium end (and even in the high ends), they were just worried about getting bikes out of the factory so pretty much as long as the bike looked something close to the picture in the catalog or in the pamphlet they were satisfied. So is almost sure that some old bikes are moving around with the right decals per catalog but with the wrong tubes, only a master builder can tell from dinging the tubes if are what they suppose to be.