I picked up a frame off Craigslist earlier today. It was my size, nearby, and fairly priced (I think). The information I have is:
Eightys, Motobecane Grand Sprint Frame, TA crank, Atom pedals, Campy headset, Weinmann front brake, Shimano front d, No dents horizontal drops with adjusters. Replacement chrome end Reynolds 531 fork.
I have pictures of the frame here:
http://densspot-randoms.blogspot.com.
I'm new to cycling and know nothing about this bike, so any information would be helpful. Also, suggestions for my goals in doing a rebuild would be helpful. For example, is it meant to be a racer? My initial thought was to convert it into a fixed gear... is posting that here tantamount to sacrilege?
Thanks in advance for any help.
It's already been significantly altered from stock, so I doubt anyone here would have a fit if you converted it to a fixed gear. One more steel bike still on the road, you know...
Some things to keep in mind: Motobecanes of that era used Swiss-thread bottom brackets, so you'll probably need to keep the present cups and just replace the spindle with one suitable for a fixed gear chainline. Either that or use a threadless cartridge bottom bracket.
As you note, the fork has already been replaced, but originally it would have had metric threading (25 x 1M). It's quite possible that a previous owner swapped the fork for an English thread fork to use a more readily available English thread headset. This would also eliminate the issue of a metric (22.0mm) steer tube, requiring a metric stem rather than the more common 22.2mm diameter steer tube.
IIRC, the "Grand Sprint" was an entry-level model with generic "sports/touring" geometry.