bike re-animator: Zan's late-60s Peugeot mixte

Yes, yet another Peugeot mixte, this time a real vintage one from, I'm guessing, about 1968. If anyone knows how to definitively date these things, let me know. My friend Zan, who rides SF2G with us sometimes down to work, had this kicking around for a long time in semi-functional condition. This is often the case with old 10-speed drivelines that were never very good to begin with, but are universally much worse for the years.

Original, semi-haggard condition

So, as usual, to start, we stripped it down to the frame/fork/headset and (unfortunately) the oddball 24mm Frenchie seatpost.

Park bottom-bracket threading tool gives this frame some English religion

Naturally, being French, this thing had some issues. First was the bottom bracket, which was expected. To teach it a thing or two, we applied the Park BTS-1, which is very good at persuading threads to see its way of thinking. In this case, 24 thread-per-inch English style, so we could install a modern Shimano UN-72 bottom bracket.

What? a 7mm quill stem bolt? Only the French. Note: this is not the original; it was severely beaten.

Next was the stem. Being averse to global standards -- why do what everyone else does when we can be different and French? -- the Peugeot guys decided a 24mm handlebar was a good idea, so the stem had to go. Naturally it was seized in place, so much Liquid Wrench was applied over several weeks, and a good beating with a hammer commenced. At last it came around, and was summarily buried deep in the parts bin.

Interesting lug cutout detail -- meant to evoke Mayan pyramids perhaps?

Sometime later, I was in Pedal Revolution to get some Soma Sparrow or similar handlebars, when, on a lark, I asked if they had any Frenchy stems. They doubted it, but then emerged from the back room with a very cool ATAX stem, complete with French tricolor, which meant it was surely the 22.0mm steerer I needed (nearly every other quill stem in the universe is 22.2mm... who knows why)

From bikes!

What made it sweet was that the bar clamp is 25.4mm, which is very common, even in 2011, and so getting nice modern riser bars wasn't a problem. I picked up some Origin8s, which are pretty similar to Sparrows.

Almost done, just needs cables & grips

As for brakes, well, of course they needed to be long-reach, so I just used some of my standard Shimano Nexus super long-armed dual-pivots. They are kinda cheap, but work fine and have plenty of reach/fender clearance. You can pick them up for $10-15 each.

Brake bridge is flat, which made it necessary to use spacers for mounting the caliper. C'est la vie.

The front brake was no problem of course, but the rear was obtuse. This frame has two of the usual brake bridges, but the are both drilled "vertically", which means I think they were meant as fender attachment points. The only bridge with "horizontal" drilling is a flat one, which is a bit of an issue with these particular calipers' super long bolts. Cutting off extra bolt with Mr. Dremel is no trouble, but the bolts are only threaded about half way, so I had to come up with some spacers. Fortunately I found a random 1" aluminum tube with 1/8" thick walls, which I cut in half with a hacksaw and pressed into service. Seems to be fine, but we'll see how the braking turns out.

Naturally, it uses amazing special tubing, only available in France

This frame has a lot of cool details & stickers that the later Peugeot mixtes don't, and they're all black & white with some gold accents, which looks good with orange. As such, Zan picked up some deep-section cheap-ish track wheels from ebay, with white rims & black hubs. They look sharp (orange rims pictured are placeholders used for setting up the brakes etc.)