Brad is now indicating that it was originally branded as a Bellini.

Giancarlo Bellini was a pretty darn good pro racer that retired at the end of the 1978 season. He raced for Molteni (with Eddy, I presume!), Brooklyn, then Zonca. He won KOM in the '76 TdF!! Quite a list of palmares.

It is entirely possible that he sold frames with his name on them after retiring. I'd bet Monet that they were made in Mexico!

He almost certainly didn't build the frameset in question personally, as he was still rather busy racing professionally in 1978. Cool story, though, if true.

The French BB threads *are* nutty, though. You don't re-tap to French, so it probably was French-threaded to begin with? Brad, for sure the right-side cup is right-hand threads, correct? Just want to verify that, because if it is left-hand, then the shell may be British and the Swiss cups were kind of forced into it.... And is the fork for sure British? If both the fork and the BB threads are and were always French, I might lean more towards Spain than Mexico for country of origin....