Sometimes a bike will cross my path and I won’t even give it a second look. But then other times I see potential in the bike and I just can’t get rid of it. This was one of those bikes. My friend Nina‘s father passed away some years back and he was a racer back in the 70s/80s here in Rhode Island. She was cleaning out the shed and came across this old frame of his. Looked pretty beat up and covered with cobwebs. Apparently he had many bikes. It wasn’t a very special looking frame and on top of that it was a Motobecane. French bikes are notorious for being a pain in the butt to restore because of their non-standard components. This 1972 Le Champion seemed like a good candidate for a 650b conversion though. But then it sat in my garage for several years!
In the middle of the summer of 2022, I was taking some components to my new powdercoater and decided to have him strip this frame just to see what it looked like underneath. When I got it back, I was very surprised to see the quality of the build. The brazing was great and the frame was surprisingly light. It was still a production bike though, so it had never received any proper finish work.
I got to work pretty quickly on this one and aligned the frame/fork, re-spaced the rear end to 130mm, added some cantilever bosses, modified the bridges, added cable stops, water bottle bosses, downtube shifter bosses, reinforced the seat binder, added a cable hanger off of the binder, and fabricated a front rack. I conveniently had the Le Champion decals as I had done a Motobecane restoration some years back. All the pieces were falling into place…even for a French bicycle! The original 1972 Le Champion had a metallic teal frame with white lugs but I preferred a white headtube instead. The rest of the paint is pretty true to the original (minus that top tube decal).
Even though Simplex or Huret would’ve been more at home on this build, I preferred some higher quality and reliable components. Don’t hate me, purists. It rides beautifully!
1972 Motobecane Le Champion 650b conversion
February 21, 2024
Sometimes a bike will cross my path and I won’t even give it a second look. But then other times I see potential in the bike and I just can’t get rid of it. This was one of those bikes. My friend Nina‘s father passed away some years back and he was a racer back in the 70s/80s here in Rhode Island. She was cleaning out the shed and came across this old frame of his. Looked pretty beat up and covered with cobwebs. Apparently he had many bikes. It wasn’t a very special looking frame and on top of that it was a Motobecane. French bikes are notorious for being a pain in the butt to restore because of their non-standard components. This 1972 Le Champion seemed like a good candidate for a 650b conversion though. But then it sat in my garage for several years!
In the middle of the summer of 2022, I was taking some components to my new powdercoater and decided to have him strip this frame just to see what it looked like underneath. When I got it back, I was very surprised to see the quality of the build. The brazing was great and the frame was surprisingly light. It was still a production bike though, so it had never received any proper finish work.
I got to work pretty quickly on this one and aligned the frame/fork, re-spaced the rear end to 130mm, added some cantilever bosses, modified the bridges, added cable stops, water bottle bosses, downtube shifter bosses, reinforced the seat binder, added a cable hanger off of the binder, and fabricated a front rack. I conveniently had the Le Champion decals as I had done a Motobecane restoration some years back. All the pieces were falling into place…even for a French bicycle! The original 1972 Le Champion had a metallic teal frame with white lugs but I preferred a white headtube instead. The rest of the paint is pretty true to the original (minus that top tube decal).
Even though Simplex or Huret would’ve been more at home on this build, I preferred some higher quality and reliable components. Don’t hate me, purists. It rides beautifully!