Eddy Merckx Tour de France

Another trip to the tip and I came home with an Eddy Merckx Tour de France. Not that familiar with these bikes, I thought they were only higher end models and this seems low end. Not sure on age either, anyone else have any more info?

Falcon acquired the rights to use the Merckx name and used it mainly on low end bikes, although there were a few high end campag models. Merckx was reputedly upset that his name ended up on such basic bikes but hey, he trousered the cash!

Decals don't look right but there again Falcon might have run out of some lol

Other manufacturers abroad also bought the rights to the merckx name, Kessels was one iirc.

Bet that weighs a ton.....

Aah that makes sense then, I quite like it though so I'll do something with it, thanks for the info.

Yes it's not light.

I've always had a bit of a liking for these because they are a such a great example of selling something purely on it's name and I have always been a lover of Falcon's because of their do whatever takes our fancy at the time attitude. From memory they were nick named supermarket Merckx because they were quite often sold by Asda etc. But yes they are superbly low end.

You do quite often see them up on ebay for stupendous prices and its always because people with absolutely no idea about bikes think because it says Merckx on it then it must be worth a fortune.

You can get all the decals for them so I do fancy doing one at some point but I've yet to see one come up locally for a low enough price to entice me into doing it.

We had to sell them in the bike shop I worked in lol

I have to admit when I saw it at the tip I was partly seduced by the name myself. Having always been a mountain biker I wasn't really sure how good it was, although I could see the componentry was pretty poor.

It looks like most of it's original, you've got a brake lever to re fit, the rear mech is definitely wrong and I'm not sure about the saddle but apart from that it looks pretty original.

It looks like a later one and one of the better ones at least because of the chrome fork ends and the Suntour bits so looks like all you need is the correct suntour rear mech and a fair bit of elbow grease

Almost every bike I buy seems to have had the rear mech replaced with one of those, I've got a box of them! The wheels aren't a matching pair, the rear is an alloy rim and the front is rusty chrome, not sure which is the original one? Also the drive side crank is a silstar and the other side is Sr custom, again not sure which side has been replaced?

I think the catalogues are about for that period so you should be ok.