French Bike Teardown

Here's a late 70's Motobecane Nomade I recently brought home:

It almost looks rideable as is, but I would never trust a 35 year old bike without doing a little work on it first. I don't like this seat anymore...

I typically start removing the stuff on top first, and work my way down to the wheels. This bike has stem shifters, so I needed to loosen the clamp before the handlebars could come out:

Now I can loosen the stem bolt and remove the bars:

I guess I was pretty lucky that the aluminum stem actually came out. Sometimes they can chemically weld themselves in place.

Time to remove the fork. I was too lazy to grab my big adjustable wrench for the locknut, which is why you see me using channel lock pliers. Don't use them on a really nice bike...

The top nut is off, but now the brake hanger is in the way:

Off with the front wheel:

Now I can squeeze the brake pads together to get some slack in the brake cable, and slide it off the hanger:

Reflector, hanger, and spacer removed:

The top bearing race is the last piece to remove. It should just unscrew by hand, revealing the bearings underneath:

After the headset is taken off, the fork just slides out:

Removing the brake for cleaning:

Ewwwww...

Time to do the cranks. These covers unscrew with a quarter or a penny pretty easily:

Now you need a socket to fit the nut inside the crank (for square tapered cranks):

With the nut removed the crank still won't come off. You need this special tool:

Right crank removed, yay! Just repeat for the other side.

Bye bye rear wheel:

The chain needs some cleaning, so I used my special tool to remove it:

Now the bottom bracket needs some love. First remove the lockring (this one was actually pretty tough for once):

The adjustable cup might unscrew by hand, but in this case I had to use this method again:

If you own a bike shop you could use a Park Tool pin spanner, but the needle nose pliers get it done all the same. Here is the spindle removed:

The right side cup on a French bike will be normally threaded (not left hand threaded like most other bikes). On this bike that bearing cup was seized in place, so I left it alone. I'd rather not have it loosen up on me later anyway. 

Moving on, the brake cables can be disconnected from the levers fairly easily. You just need to unhook them from the barrel inside the lever:

Here is the frame as it sits now:

I didn't remove the derailleurs or cables because they actually seemed to move fine. These Huret derailleurs have pinch bolts that fray the end of the cable, so if you remove the cables then you don't get to reuse them (it's almost impossible to thread them back through the tiny pinch bolt again). If you ever worked on an old Schwinn then you'll know what I'm talking about. My next post will cover reassembling the bike in better working order. Cheers!