Bringing an Eddy Merckx Professional back to it's glory

Same here, really excited for the new paintjob and the final build!

There was a newer one for sale on here, a couple of months ago. Also in cherry red but with the brake cables routed through the TT.
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/285335/

Saw that one too but had some difficulties believing it was from 1983. Merckx didn't have internal cable routing that early, that only came later.

I'll have to resource some parts as I used some of them to finish another one I built (but sold because the size wasn't really my thing)

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Forks are ready, let the building begin!

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Oh Wim, this is going to look amazing!

Thanks, @Poetic , I really do like it too. I'm leaving for a cycle tour tomorrow so this will have to wait a week or two.

Oh cool, where are you heading off to?

I have some friends who will climb the Grand Colombier next friday so I'm flying to Marseille tomorrow morning to begin my tour through the Alps there. I will join the friends next thursday after having done 550 km or so. This is my route:

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Looking forward to the build, this is gonna be an awesome machine! A chromed DS chainstay would have been nice imho :) Enjoy your tour! Must be hard to pick a bike for a tour with a stable like yours...

Nice one, have a good trip mate.

I know, the DS should have been chromed but I like it this way too. :-)

No, in fact it's easy to pick a bike for touring as I only have one that I really like touring with:

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And thanks, @Sig_Arlecchino and @Poetic I will send a postcard from France. ;-)

Fair enough, that's indeed a more appropriate touring machine than a racer with a seatpost mounted rack :)

Looks incredible! Where did you get the forks chromed if you don't mind me asking?

The sprayer had them done in a company close to Ghent. Sanding and rechroming only costed 50 euro so that's a fair price.

I think these are the guys: http://www.chromagecentral.be/

50 euros for a sand and rechrome is amazing value. How quick was the turnaround?

Place I looked at in the UK quoted me £90 to chrome raw steel.

Merckx looks the bomb btw

Thanks. I'm going to take the time needed to source all the best parts needed. I do have most of a SR groupset but some parts just aren't good enough for this.

It took 3 weeks to have them rechromed. Chroming raw steel is more expensive here too because they can't re-use the chrome that's already on the forks. These forks were chromed before but the former owner had the bike completely resprayed (see pictures at first page).

What an excellent project and interesting frame - great that you saw through the original description.

Thanks, @Si46

Found some nice parts today: SR pedals, SR panto'ed brake levers and a silver panto'ed stem. Paid bit too much but luckely there were some things attached. ;-)

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Nice score! Another professional, right? What's the deal with the decals? I assume you're going to polish the brake levers and stem for the repainted professional?

Indeed, another (early) Professional. It has the long pinned lugs so it should be one built by De Rosa.

I'm not sure about the decals but as the early bikes Merckx produced didn't have a clearcoat on top of the decals, maybe the original decals were removed and replaced by the ones from VD Water (a bike shop in Kasterlee, Belgium). These can be removed easily and I will put new Merckx decals on it.

Yip, I'm going to polish the levers and stem so I can put them on my resprayed frame. I more like the idea of havving original paint but this frame is just a bit too small for me.

Nice Wim! Aren't they NR levers though?

I'm not quite sure as the have these NR-unlike lateral "drillings".

Polished some of the recently found parts, mounted some of the parts I already had so it starts looking like a bike.

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A set of NOS cablehousing, bartape and pedalstraps arrivved today but sad to see the cable housing is "lemon" yellow and the other parts are "egg" yellow. The decals are egg yellow too so won't use the cableset. Would be too much yellow anyway.

Resulting in this so far

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