Motobecane B.B. threading
 

Hi, I have a motobecane which I believe is a mid-70's nomad with a stuck fixed cup. To make things worse I was assuming since it was a French bike it would have French threading, but I was just looking on Sheldon Brown's website and he says many of them are swiss so the fixed cup would be LH threading.:notamused: I tried the opposite direction lightly a couple of time not very hard, but I don't want to mess it up and I think I may not have done much damage yet. The reason I want to remove this is to repaint it, but I guess I could just leave it on and try to cover it, but to get to the point I was wondering if anyone can definitively tell me the threading.
Thank you,
Chris

In answer to your question ... probably not, unless you have a definite year. Motobecane started with French, switched to Swiss, and I think ultimately went to conventional ... others here will know the exact years. All I know for sure is that my '77 Grand Jubile is Swiss.

Thanks, I pretty much figured that and have been trying to figure out the year. I think I figured out that its is 73 or before. I found some catalogs on velobase and it looks like they changed from simplex dérailleurs and dia-compe brake that were on this one to huret and weinmann in 75 but 74 says fully painted fork and mine has a half chromed fork. Also if it helps anyone pinpoint the year it has a weird cheap plastic head decal and the lugs say BCM. It would help a lot though if someone knew about the year or years they made the change.

Chris

As is my '79 Grand Sprint. We're beginning to narrow it down......:D
Top

The switch must have varied by model. My 1979 Team is French threaded.

only a wild guess, but I think if it's *really* mid-70s it's probably French threading, I don't think they were switching to Swiss that early. If you have a Stronglight BB, there's a groove (or lack of one) that helps ID Swiss from FR...check the archives, cause I can't remember which is which.

Thanks but the BB thing doesn't help it's got cottered cranks and a crappy unmarked bottom bracket. I'm kind of hoping it's french because I think I'll have better luck if i want to put cotterless cranks on. I'm starting to think it might be a mirage because of the chrome fork tips and crown, but not sure. There are numbers on the BB shell but there just 609. I don't know if thats the serial number there are also numbers on the dropouts, but they're hard to read and i think they might just be for the drop outs.

cottered crank: very, very likely it's FR threads.

Until I read your post, I had believed that Peugeot switched over in 1980 and that Motobecane beat them by about 3 years.

To be honest, I guess it's possible that my bike is a 1978, although it's a dead-ringer for the 1979 catalog page on Velobase. I haven't seen the 1978 catalog. The RD is stamped 78 so it's no earlier than that. I bought the bike new in April 1979. It's also possible that I have an unusual frame. The 1979 catalog specs indicate Campy dropouts but mine are Huret. Perhaps they were using up some old parts.

I have a rather late Moto Team Champion frame -- 1984 -- that's got a French threaded BB. I think that it must have been a defiant cultural gesture.