Motobécane 'Gran Jubilé' conversion

Fyoosh - hello - thanks for the note. Work stopped play for a few months but just started this up again. Bought some Andel cranks from Herne Hill the other weekend and fitted an old chainring I polished up:

Partial assembly of the bike happening this afternoon but I need a saddle and seatpost (26.4) to finish. Fancy a sprung Brooks...

Good to see it's still on the move. Really looking forward to seeing this built up. The frame looks great.

Thanks for the comments. Wingedangel, totally agree about the sympathetic restos. My favourite builds have been those using original unrestored or new-old-stock parts - a bit of polish and some period track bits transformed my old Peugeot 531 and this Merckx was all about rat-look dirt and corrosion. This one's using a newer mix of parts so it's a bit tougher (just got a new job that's a 20-minute ride away along a bumpy Thames towpath) but I still want the vintage look - hence that Campag copy crankset, old school colour and repro decals.

One annoying hold up is the seatpost is a 26.2 not 26.4 so it's waiting on the postman to be finished. Got a day off tomorrow though so hopefully can make some progress for some more pics - I have an interesting idea involving a wooden handlebar...

This looks tight, hopefully mine will look as good!

Finally some progress, if a little of a mixed bag. I spent a bit of time in the bank holiday sun throwing this together, starting with the aforementioned wooden experiment:

I picked up the bar on a whim in a Copenhagen bike shop recommended by someone on here. I like it, but after staring at it for a while I decided it just doesn't work with brake levers. Since I lack the balls to ride sans brakes on the road, the wood goes back to its dusty shelf while I vaguely contemplate a future hub-braked build.

The good news is (and to be fair a big motivator in switching back to the drops) is that the original bars have some nice 'M' logo engravings and have polished up rather well. The equally shiny Dia Compe brake levers are obviously just loosely hanging there at the mo:

Crankset looks good too. I'm squinting and pretending it's an old Spidel Campag copy when in reality it's at best a copy of a copy, but hey:

And here's the slightly hasty kitchen shot from last night of where we are at so far, wheels and broken cutlery drawer an' all:

Literally only just getting away with those 700x32 tyres between the rear chainstays (some pics to show that soon) but as long as I position a little way back down the dropouts it'll be fine. Note that in the pic above the wheel could probably come forward a bit to close the gap with the seat tube.

Another unexpected problem was brake-related. As you may have seen further up the thread the plan was to use some NOS Spidels but I discovered this spot-the-difference scenario ably demonstrated by the old calipers:

Yep, the front brake is short drop and the rear long, so those Spidels are not going to work. After a bit of head scratching I remembered I had bought these for my Peugeot conversion before I got all obsessed about period correctness:

They have just enough adjustment in them to soak up the drop difference front and rear. So that's the next job - along with lifting up the stem a bit to accommodate a bell, as inspired by Doppelkorn's picture a scroll or two above. More on all that soon...

PS - to SWijlamd, sorry, missed your question about the decals up there. Yes, I applied on top of the lacquer. Armourtex won't bake with stickers and my Raleigh project now has loads of all-weather miles on it with no peeling. Cranks, as Wingedangel says, are reproductions and were shiny like that out of the packet.