The Merckx Full Circle Project

**Hilary, Dave and The 4 Handlebars of The Apocalypse

**I am a pair of pedals, tyres, tape and a brake away from riding the Merckx.

The front brake is hopefully sorted. And I thinking of a Paul cross lever. Primarily because it will have my name pantographed on it. And it won't even cost me extra. Sweet.

Seriously though, it's taken a while to get all the bits. So although this isn't a groupset shot, here's a little shiny photo

http://imageshack.us/a/img541/6196/bikekit.jpg

The Pista cranks are courtesy of AndyP. Merckx Cinelli XA stem from FranktheTank. I picked up the Chorus seatpost from ebay, Records were just going for too much and I needed to save a few quid somewhere. And I got the San Marco Regal Girardi seat for a bargain too.

The bars pictured are for illustrative purposes. I'll be using 65s, but not those exact ones. Here's why...

Before I bought pretty much anything else - other than the frame - I picked up a set of Cinelli Mon Campione Del Mondo bars. Old shield logo, decent condition. Pretty sweet shape on the drops. We'll call these Bars1.

To partner my lovely new friend, Bars1, I began a quest that would see me (metaphorically) scour the globe for a lovely Merckx panto stem. They occasionally cropped up on ebay. But were either in not very good knick or the wrong length. Or the wrong clamp size. I needed 26.0mm.

But then FranktheTank popped up with a Merckx stem on LFGSS. NOS condition. The right kinda length. Maybe a touch on the pricey side ;) but I was willing to chuck a little extra at it. Only problem - it was 26.4mm.

I left it for a week. Then I thought frig that, I'll change the bars.

So began my 2nd great quest - the search for a pair of Cinelli 65s. A non-milky non-brand new pair. We'll call these guys Bars2.

It took a while to find. I missed a pair on ebay. But eventually I chanced upon a pair when I visited Hilary Stone's site. Good condition, price seemed about right. And importantly, the right size for me and the stem. Email sent. Payment made. Job done.

Except when **Bars2 **arrive, they're not **Bars2. **No. They're BarsMotherFucking3.

Now, I don't wanna put a downer on BarsMotherFucking3. They're nice. 3TTT Superleggero. But they're not the right buddy for my Cinell stem. And they're for a 26.0mm clamp, not 26.4mm.

Arrrrrggg.

Get back on to Hilary. Email sent. No reply. No reply. No reply. Get angry. Make forum post. Assume I'll never seen see Bars2 and start thinking of selling Bars1 and BarsMotherFucking3. And because I just wanna get my bike build back on track, I decide that yes I should just buy a pair of Cinelli 65s - the milky new ish ones - and maybe even deanodize them.

Say hello to Bars4. That's them in the picture up there. Right, all sorted then. Or so I think.

The day after I buy Bars4, I get an email. Make that two emails. One from Hilary and one from Dave. Hang on, who's Dave?

It transpires that a bloke calling himself 'Dave in Amsterdam' had received Bars2. And I had received **BarsMotherFucking3. **Hilary had accidentally sent the wrong ones to each of us. Dave said he just wanted to check I was real. And can we swap.

So we confirmed that we were both indeed real. And our addresses were correct. And our respective bars are now on their way home. Huzzah. Though of course, I've still got **Bars1 **and Bars4 now and I'm sick of tripping over spare parts in my office.

The funny little part of the story (for me anyway) was that Dave is also in the midst of a project. He's restoring a Bianchi he picked up - you can see it here http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=253356

Turns out he'd got a few too many parts aswell. He was looking for a very specific stem to go with BarsMotherFucking3. And after all this, just before Hilary got in touch with us about the mistake, he'd found that stem. And bought it. And it came with the exact same bars, so he's got two sets. We'll call them BarsMotherFucking5 !!!