Last May, I went to my usual old bike haunt, BikeWorks, looking for parts but of course couldn't help but go look at what they had in the warehouse for project bikes. As it turned out they had a big line of bikes all leaned together that they hadn't sorted yet. I was looking through them somewhat distractedly " Road bike, Mountain bike, Mixte, Hybrid, Stingray, Road bike..wait..what the HELL!" and then I took another look at what I had thought was a old Schwinn Sting Ray and then did a double take worthy of a bugs bunny cartoon- some ingenious and
blasphemous bastard had taken a 70′s Peugeot UO-8 road bike and equipped
it with Ape Hanger handle bars and Banana seat effectively turning it
into a Schwinn Sting Ray. I was stunned, impressed and horrified all at
once. Is it a Peug-winn, a Schwin-geot or a UO-Ray8?
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| What the hell happened? |
And then the bike spoke to me in heavily accented English;
Pleeze
Monsieur, HELP!, remove my shame, Merde! undo what zey did to moi, I
want to be ze road bike again. Lets Allez! How could I possibly walk away
? When one of the other customers overheard me telling the wrench I was getting the bike solely to restore it to its natural state, he offered to take the ape hangers and banana seat off my hands for $10, since the bike was only $25 I was able to take on another bike project I didn't need for a net of $15 bucks.
Once I stopped shaking my head over the absurdity of what had been done to this former road bike,
I realized that except for the saddle, handle bars and brake levers I had a pretty complete road bike and in fact it didn't take much digging around the garage to mock up a road bike once I had stripped the offending ape hangers and banana seat off.
And although it was "only" a lowly entry level UO-8 it still had its charms...
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| classic 70s head badge |
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| Atax stem with made in France flourish and non plastic Simplex stem shifters |
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Once I got down to business cleaning it up, replacing all the standard pieces and cleaning and rebuilding the bearings it all came together pretty nicely.
Once I had it back to its 70′s entry level road bike glory, it sold in a day on Craigslist to a nice young lady who teaches science to kids.
Ride.Smile.Repeat.
