TimMK

Hi,

my latest project for a friend is shown below. Could it be a Motobecane Grand Touring? At least I found some pictures of bikes looking kind of like this type in a 1975 catalog. The frame is quite particular with the top tube starting as one fat tube an splitting up in two around the middle length. Everything was shiny and almost unused. I guess the bike lived in a garage until today and was almost never ridden.

Thanks,
Tim

TireLever-07

That's a *Mixie* style, woman's bike. The Grand touring was a drop bar road bike. Plenty of road bikes got converted to flat bars over the years. The Motobecane decals, type face helps dating the year. Later 1970s Motobecanes had a bolder, thicker letter decals. Kona was making a modern Mixie bike, but not like the 1970s & 80's when they were everywhere. cheers

Roger M 

Motobecane did make the Grand touring in a mixte frame(I had a 1973 mixte GT). I think the grand touring models had chrome on the fork legs?

3alarmer 

.
...in the mid 70's, Motobecane was using cotterless cranks on anything as upscale as a Grand Touring.

It's some other level mixte frame, of which they marketed a few. Those frame dropouts will be different from the picture of the GT you found as well.

CV-6 

That is Mixte, not Mixie. It is not necessarily a woman's bicycle and literally translates as mixed or unisex.

That frame is not your usual mixte. Note you have the "top tube" starting as a regular tube and then it stops partway down and the stays are brazed in into the end. More common is the two stays running up to the head tube. Appears to have forged dropouts.

The rear derailleur needs attention.

verktyg 

Motobecane started using the "high water mark" horizontal stripe decals on the seat and down tubes in 1977. The Grand Touring models from the late 70's used Vitus 172 main tubes with standard Motobecane carbon steel forks and stays.

They made this style mixte frame for a number of years during that era. It might be the Sprintour model with a standard carbon steel frame.

Because of the upright bars, cottered steel cranks and Huret derailleurs rather than Suntour it might be a European model.

Chas.

verktyg 

Lynn, supposedly the mixte design was developed for the French army - one size fits all and they were easy to get on and off with military gear.

If you look closely the head tube is not lugged. It has pseudo lugs rolled into it with internal spuds that the tubes fit over. The whole design of the frame was a lot easier to manufacturer.

The dropouts look to be forged but they're stamped steel.

Chas.

T-Mar

It would appear to be an entry level European city bike based on the steel cottered crankset, generator tab and kickstand plate. Despite the integral derailleur hanger, the dropouts appear to be stamped, 3D versions.

Edit: It looks a lot like this French market 1983 Motobecane DM 21. Lugless Inexternal brazing with a Motobecane brand should place it 1983-1984, unless European models were using Inexternal brazing earlier than the USA models.

TimMK

Thanks for all the answers! I will quickly go through them:

1) I live in Germany and bought the bike in the Netherlands, so it's very likeley to be a European model

2) The lugs on the head tube really are a bit strange. Their surface kind of transitions very smoothly into the head tube. They don't have the usual steps like normal lugs.

3) The dopouts are definately not forged.

The 1983 DM12 looks quite like it, but there are several frames with the caracteristic of the splitting top tube.

I tried to date the Huret drailleur but it seems this type was built over a period of 10 years?

I could not find any frame number, so I've made a few additional pictures:

Sorry, I somehow cannot upload any images, since a "security token is missing", whatever that means...

verktyg 

T-Mar,

I think you nailed it. I don't have any French Moto catalogs, only US, UK and German. Where did you find the French info?

Motobecane, Peugeot and Gitane all switched to lugless frames on their entry level to lower mid range models in the early 80's. They used "preforms" - brazing material rings inside and outside the tubing with automated heating instead of hand brazing.

When properly done the results work well.

The reduced manufacturing costs allowed those French companies to survive a little longer against the onslaught of lower priced bikes from Taiwan.

The marketing department hype billed this as a revolutionary technology but the process was in use for manufacturing products made of tubing for decades.

Chas.

T-Mar

Sorry, I don't recall where I got it. I've found maybe a handful of French Motobecane catalogues but they were all random sites. I've never found a collection of French Motobecane catalogues on one site.

Unfortunately, the image isn't of sufficient resolution to positively identify the components. However, the frame does have the same features (i.e. wishbone top tube, generator mount, rack eyelets on the upper stays). The only other model with the wishbone top tube in the catalogue was a higher model and it didn't have the generator tab or stay eyelets.

Of course, it could be a different model depending on the market and year. I don't know how much model variation there was between European countries for Motobecane. Still, we should be looking at a relatively small window of time. Inexternal brazing was introduced in 1982 (1983 in my previous post was a typo). While it's possible that the process was introduced earlier in Europe, I think this would be unlikely. Based on my research, the Motobecane name was dropped in favour of MBK for 1985, with only some early 1985 models being labeled Motobecane. So, while it may not be a DM21 due to market or year variation, it is the closest I have to offer.