Bob Hovey wrote:
>
> Speaking of provenance, I just took on a project for my LBS in return for all
> the nice things they've done for me over the years. The owner's got a
> Merckx/Motorola frame that belonged to Andy Hampsten which I have volunteered to
> help restore so that it can go on display (he's got a high ceiling and I've been
> trying to talk him into turning the upper part of the walls into a museum like
> Dale did with CdO). Andy's seen pics and has confirmed that the bike was his
> (besides his name on the top tube, I guess there's just not that many 55cm
> ST/ 59cm TT Merckx/Motorola frames out there).
>
> Andy never responded to my question about what year this frame was (93?), nor
> have I gotten any answer to my email to Merckx & Co.
>
> So here's my questions: Can anybody put a firm date on this frame? And does
> anyone have any race photos that could get me started on rounding up a
> component group? Andy told me what size stem and what saddle he used, and that's
> all the info I have so far.
>
> http://hometown.aol.com/
I have a Motorola Merckx MAX-leader that was one of Andy Hampsten's bikes used in the spring classics around '91 or '92 (I forget). Top tube 57cm and seat tube 55cm c to c. I think he had around 10 bikes each season and it's real easy to find articles on how many bikes a team like Motorola would give each member per season. At the end of each season the team warehouse had a LOT of frames/bikes to get rid of and a lot of them wound up in the Milwaukee area or to people savvy enough to befriend the warehouse manager and buy the things at very attractive prices.
If you look in back issues of Winning magazine (and there are tons of back issues floating around for almost no money) the Motorola team (it was US based) was photographed extensively and it's very easy to identify the changes in the team bikes from month to month and year to year. As an example, my bike has the converging stripes on the top tube which identifies the year from when the stripes were parallel. And there are lots of stickers (American Airlines, Columbus, etc.) to date the bikes.
Also Motorola printed and distributed tons of press kits so these are very easy to find now.
My advise... much better to do the homework than to rely on someone else's faulty memory.
Chuck Schmidt South Pasadena, Southern California
ps Proving my bike's provenance? I know what it is and don't much care if anyone else believes me or not. The bike's not going anywhere since it's not for sale... a beautiful ride!
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