doctor-bond
Feature Bike
Oops I did it again. After promising not to, I couldn’t resist putting in a low bid on a recent ’Bay auction for what was billed as one of Tim Gould’s old CX race frames, and to my surprise, no one else bid.
That’s prolly because, a) there was no provenance, and b) it’s going to need some work …
Having given it a good once-over:
It is likely 753 as billed weighing in at 1740g, having an old-style 753 respray sticker and being incredibly pingy.
It will need a new driveside chainstay and forks, but otherwise looks sound.
It has campag dropouts and no frame number save a “55” size-stamp.
As to provenance, I was uncertain but hopeful: as I found with the previous Gould MTB I revived, taking a punt makes some sense: who really would go to the trouble of faking such a thing, Occam’s razor, if it quacks, etc.
So I set about the internet, and have turned up some intriguing info.
Exhibit it a ^^ decals. In the hope of getting a date for this, I trawled old Peugeot catalogues and Peugeot bike images to find a match. So far …. nothing. It’s similar to many 80s designs, but not the same. Has anyone seen a ’tail-less’ stylised lion like this? Doesn’t match any of the suspects below.
Nor do the frame ‘stripes’ match anything I can find on a real Peugeot Decal set. So what happened? Did someone commission some ’wrong’ stickers to put together a tribute bike? Hmmm. Quack.
And then I happened across a Tim Gould appreciation group on Facebook: you might know it. I’m not a natural FBer but it’s a good group and I’ll repost this stuff there. It turned up a couple of great clues:
First a late 80s MTB photo (can anyone recognise the event? It’s not tagged on FB). Check out the decals: they match the strip and my frame. I think the strip is 1988/89. Need to confirm.
Next, the FB thread had tagged this frame last time it went through ebay in 2021: someone mentioned that the Peugeot CX bikes were actually Brian Rourke built. So a quick email to the incredibly helpful Wayne at Rourke, and indeed, in the late 80s they produced a batch of CX frames for the Peugeot race team. The likely dates are summer 1987.
All of which leads me to the hypothesis that this is a 1987 Rourke-built, Peugeot-badged, Gould-raced 753 frame, campaigned in 87/88, then re sprayed with the new strip for 1989. Glad I took a punt.
That’s prolly because, a) there was no provenance, and b) it’s going to need some work …
Having given it a good once-over:
It is likely 753 as billed weighing in at 1740g, having an old-style 753 respray sticker and being incredibly pingy.
It will need a new driveside chainstay and forks, but otherwise looks sound.
It has campag dropouts and no frame number save a “55” size-stamp.
As to provenance, I was uncertain but hopeful: as I found with the previous Gould MTB I revived, taking a punt makes some sense: who really would go to the trouble of faking such a thing, Occam’s razor, if it quacks, etc.
So I set about the internet, and have turned up some intriguing info.
Exhibit it a ^^ decals. In the hope of getting a date for this, I trawled old Peugeot catalogues and Peugeot bike images to find a match. So far …. nothing. It’s similar to many 80s designs, but not the same. Has anyone seen a ’tail-less’ stylised lion like this? Doesn’t match any of the suspects below.
Nor do the frame ‘stripes’ match anything I can find on a real Peugeot Decal set. So what happened? Did someone commission some ’wrong’ stickers to put together a tribute bike? Hmmm. Quack.
And then I happened across a Tim Gould appreciation group on Facebook: you might know it. I’m not a natural FBer but it’s a good group and I’ll repost this stuff there. It turned up a couple of great clues:
First a late 80s MTB photo (can anyone recognise the event? It’s not tagged on FB). Check out the decals: they match the strip and my frame. I think the strip is 1988/89. Need to confirm.
Next, the FB thread had tagged this frame last time it went through ebay in 2021: someone mentioned that the Peugeot CX bikes were actually Brian Rourke built. So a quick email to the incredibly helpful Wayne at Rourke, and indeed, in the late 80s they produced a batch of CX frames for the Peugeot race team. The likely dates are summer 1987.
All of which leads me to the hypothesis that this is a 1987 Rourke-built, Peugeot-badged, Gould-raced 753 frame, campaigned in 87/88, then re sprayed with the new strip for 1989. Glad I took a punt.
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753 chainstays paper thin near the BB, there's rust on the left chainstay so might need both?
