Hard to believe but this is my 50th post, and appropriately it covers the Peugeot course which is a project that seems to have gone on forever! Back in
February I covered my process of taking a bike down to the frame-set which I was able to do in under 60 minutes. This month I will go in the reverse building the bike up from the frame, which takes considerably longer. After washing and waxing the frame and fork it was time to rebuild the headset; basically cleaning the races, cups and bearings applying fresh grease and then adjusting the headset so you have no slop and no grind.
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| Pressing in the headset cups after cleaning them up |
My next step is to do a rebuild of the bottom bracket which follows the same steps as the headset and with that, half the main bearings on the bike are finished.
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| Headset and bottom bracket rebuilt |
After that its time to clean up and lube the derailleurs.
And then the same for the brakes, and reflectors, including replacing the old pads with some spiffy Koolstop 4 dots.
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| Brakes added |
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| Koolstops! |
Its important when you have brake shoes that are open at one end (for removing and inserting pads) that you orient them correctly when you set them up, as the diagram from Koolstop shows, otherwise you may eject your brake pads after a few hard stops-not good.
Next it was on to shifters, cleaned and lubed, and the seatpost binder, rear brake guide and the umbrella clamp for the vintage Zefal pump after some clean up with the brass wire brush.
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| shifter, seat binder brake cable guide and pump clamp |
It was finally time to tackle the last two main bearings, the front and rear hubs. The front wheel went fairly quickly but for some reason I had an aversion to start the rear wheel. I probably had all of the above plus the front wheel done by late March but stalled out on the rear wheel until last week. As it so often seems to go, once I got started it wasn't really that hard to get through it and boy did the rear hub need TLC. Once I got it open it was pretty dry and dusty, not ideal for a wheel hub and even after some initially cleaning it was still a mess.
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| Dirty even after an initial wipe down with degreaser |
After lots of attention from degreaser and toothbrush, small brass wire brush on the Dremel and some aluminum foil I finally get it looking like it should.
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| Finally clean! |
With the hubs cleaned, repacked and adjusted, freewheel cleaned up and a fresh set of rubber on the wheels its starting to look like a bicycle again.
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| Wheels |
Next it was time to get the cranks and pedals back on the bike, because I originally got the bike missing a non drive crank arm the pedals were mismatched and pretty beat up. I decided to go with a set of lightly used MKS pedals, new toe clips I picked up from Nashbar and set of new Zefal leather straps.
The crankset, while not original to the bike is a period correct pantographed Peugeot set I purchased from Randy at
mytenspeeds back when I thought I was going to build this up for myself as a light tourer.
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| Crank it up |
Getting into the home stretch it was time to get the cockpit back together; new gum hoods for the brake levers and lots of grease for the seat tube and head tube.
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| Cockpit in place |
I did run into an unexpected snag when I started on the cabling with the brake straddle cables. The brakes on this bike are Mafacs although not the famous Racers. As I noted in a post on the
Racers they have a kind of funky straddle cable that you basically create out of a shift cable. This center-pull, at first glance, appeared to be a regular double ended cable. No worries I thought, I have a stock of those, but after looking more closely I realized I had a problem. The replacement straddle wire I had has ends that are like little hockey pucks whereas this brake takes a wire that has ends that are like ball bearings.
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| Not the same |
Fortunately I had not disposed of the old wires and they were in good shape so I was able to reuse them but its something I will know to look out for in the future.
I had actually searched to find some cables that would play off the yellow-gold of the decals and got a nice set of gold Jagwire cables to do the job, with the cables and chain in place it was just down to some fine tuning of the brakes and shifting before applying the handlebar tape and Nitto bar end plugs. I always like to leave the bar tape for last to A) avoid getting it greasy and B) allow me to adjust with brake levers after the test ride. All in all I am pretty pleased with the result.
I am thinking of doing a UO-8 (Sports) comparison to the Course in my next post. Until then ride.smile.repeat.
Ooooh. I've loving this rebuild. It's quite lovely. I like the leather toe clip addition. I'm fond of that style also.
ReplyDeleteThank you Annie, I think for this era bike the top clips with the leather straps just work.
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ReplyDeleteUPDATE: The bike got sold quickly to a tall winsome young lady who told me the bike was "Sick". I believe that rather than trying to tell me the bike had an illness she was conveying it was "an awesome example of a bike boom era French Steel road bike".
ReplyDeleteYou have really nailed it. The classic look of the 70's ten speed bike. It is my favorite because it is the time that I grew up as a teen with a love of bikes. I wonder if 40 years from now people will be rebuilding bikes from 2014 with the same passion that you put into your projects.
ReplyDeleteA sick bike that you have made beautiful with your sick skilzz!!
And, nice that you have it sold so quick after a delayed rebuild time.
Jim
Thanks Jim, glad you liked it, certainly the nicest of the Peugeots I have worked on so far. I imagine that people will find disc brakes and 11 speed drive-trains "quaint" in 40 years and I expect there will still be some lugged steel road bikes knocking around. .Now that I am working again, although it may take a few months, I might look for a "sick" ride of my own to rebuild. I would love to find Motobecane Grand Touring or a Raleigh Super Course, or something of the like, with some slightly higher grade tubing to lavish some TLC on. Although if I found a nice UO-8 all I would need is some nice components to make it a UO-10 - more on that in my next post.
DeleteHey! Good news that you are working again. (???) No, a job makes for the fun part of life to be appreciated even more so it is all good
DeleteJim the job thing is very good it could not have come at a better time. In fact I am feeling optimistic enough financially that I am going to look at a Motobecane Grand Touring this evening.
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