A friend of mine has asked me to restore her vintage Puch road bike. We went to the garage to pull it off of the wall. We took it into the air conditioned house and after about 10 seconds three of the rear spokes popped!

I would appreciate any help in identifying the model and year. I will post any date codes from the components as I disassemble the bike. The frame looks to have been repainted at some point. My friend said it was made of Reynolds 531. The components are as follows:

Dura Ace headset
Dura Ace cable clamps
SR stem (22.0) and bars (25.4)
Sugino Mighty Tour triple crank
Suntour Cyclone FD & RD
Suntour Power Ratchet DT shifters
Weinmann Carerra brakes
Normandy Luxe Competition hubs laced to Weinmann rims (27x1 1/4)
G.S.? Brev seatpost (27.2)
Shimano forged dropouts


The serial number is 5621451. Thanks in advance for the help!

Additional photos.

I plan on completely disassembling the frame and components and giving the frame an oxalic acid bath. I will throughly clean the components with Simple Green and all the bearings will be disassembled, cleaned and repacked. I assume that the best bet for the wheels will be to remove all the spokes, polish the rims and hubs and have them rebuilt. My local wheel builder would charge $80 for both wheels. That's my cheapest route, right?

hmmm, maybe you don't need to go that far with the wheels, but $80 for a pair is a great price. If you want to take a more conservative approach, I'd do all the hub repacking but just replace the spokes that popped and have the wheels tensioned and trued.
The seat post is an early GPM, also known as Gipiemme.
This seems to be in about the same league as an A-D Inter 10, so it's probably 531 (at least 3 main tubes, maybe thruout)...should be a nice ride!

looks like a nice bike. since it is July already I would not strip the frame and start a whole overhaul just clean it real good and tune it up. then if she starts riding alot do a bearing at a time overhaul, the do the bath thing over the winter.

Thanks for the responses. She obviously hasn't ridden this bike for years so there's no hurry on it. She has a MTB she commutes with and on top of that she's traveling through July. The Puch will make a much better commuter. I'm going to go ahead with the oxalic acid as I'll already have a bath drawn for my wife's rusty Peugeot mixte.

I figure if 3 spokes were in bad enough shape to snap from a change in temperature it'd be best to replace them all. That sure makes it easier to polish the rims and hubs. Maybe I'll try to lace the wheels myself. My LBS let's me hang out, drink beer and use the tools.

I was "mis-remembering". The wheel builder I used last charged $1/spoke and $40 labor per wheel. I probably will use this opportunity to get me feet wet in the waters of wheel building.

Perhaps I should've posted this in the Appraisals/Inquiries sub-forum. Could a mod please move it?