Eddy Merckx "signature" Professional 1980 - 1981

@WimVDD kindly sold me a Merckx Professional which I will slowly build over the Winter.
1st job is to remove the old decals and this frameset is covered in them.

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Never tried removing decals before but found that you can remove them quite easily with a small plastic ruler. It takes a very long time though.
An ordinary Kitchen cleaner to then remove the sticky glue residue left behind. Then a car paint renovator to bring the colour back to the old paint.

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Nice one. Look forward to seeing how this turns out. What group are you going to put on it?

Head tube has come up rather well. Excuse the pictures, the colour is a lovely red in person.

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Group will be Super Record and I'm slowly finding bits and pieces. I will try and keep it period correct.

Driveside chainstay is covered in two layers of very sticky foil.

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Tried a hairdryer? Heat the decals and they'll peel off super easily

Lovely details on the frameset -

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Not yet and will give it a go.

Decals -

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Give WD40 a go at sticker removal. If it can get under an edge it should do the trick.

Cheers for the advice.

Following this on for sure. Maybe one day we can ride our "Signatures" together. ;-)

I'll keep my eyes open for panto parts, sometimes they pop up here in Belgium.

Wim

Couple more bits for the build -

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Have you looked into whether this is De Rosa built? The serial number would have to be low

I've done a bit of research around the early frames and I have read that the early frames between 80' and 81' had the Eddy Merckx BB shell which this frame has. The early BB serial numbers don't always appear to follow any sequence and this frames numbers are different to any other professional that I've seen online.
There are three different numbers -
3,515 & 879 and no letters which can be found on Merckx BBs.
The 3 & 879 are also on the fork tube.
Some Professional have different shells and some have no serial numbers at all.

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The fork crowns are identical to early De Rosa frames but later Professional frames with no signature seat stays also have these Crowns.

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It's hard to get a good look at the frame from your pics. Lug/dropout style and finishng etc. Fork tangs, bridge style, seat cluster from the side.

Fork tangs

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Part of the brake bridge

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Few more pictures

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Very Nice! You have found one.. Looks like a De Rosa built to me. Following this one..

This is very, very beautiful.
I would be tempted to build it up and leave the stickers off for a while so the naked frame can shine.

"Dis gon ' be good " jpeg
Sub'd!