A couple years back a friend’s dad was getting rid of a couple of old bikes, and I’m bad at saying no to things. The two old 70’s Peugeots were in pretty rough shape, but free and both somehow my size. The red one became a fixie conversion (more on that here), but I wanted an excuse to keep both, so I planned to restore the white one with period appropriate parts.
This ended up being a little more complicated that I thought that would be, but more on that after some beauty shots of the finished product. Shoutout to Jamison for going on this maiden voyage with me.
Luckily, starting with the red bike first taught me a lot of things about vintage bikes and mixed standards. That project was frustrating enough, but not needing to attach derailleurs, shifters, or cables for anything except a front brake made things much more approachable.
I wanted to keep this bike mostly period appropriate, even going against what would be more convenient like swapping in 700c wheels. I stuck with the original 27″ to keep that in line, but then did move to modern conveniences for other things, such as using a cartridge bottom bracket instead of loose bearings.
The bike originally had a 3×5 Suntour group, but wasn’t in great shape and needed a lot of maintenance. I ended up making what I thought was the sensible/easy decision and purchased a 2×6 Shimano 105 group on eBay. From what I can tell, this group is the second generation of 105 from 1986 and is from before they had model numbers (i.e. 5800, R7000, etc.). I did pay a little extra for a listing that included brake levers with white hoods.
Shifting for this group is indexed, which I thought was so cool. I’ve actually never owned a bike with downtube shifting, which makes this even more intriguing to me as an odd transition point in history. I wanted a vintage bike that still is fun to ride, and indexed downtube shifting felt like the best of both worlds to me.
This noble goal ended up being more of a pain in the ass than I anticipated. Turns out, putting 80’s Japanese parts on a 70’s French frame without much documentation on either is tricky. I needed to retap quite a few threads and make a lot of finicky adjustments. Luckily, in the end, everything ended up coming together very nicely. The 5 to 6 speed change was no trouble at all, which is theoretically the truth because the hub size matches, I was still worried about it. The only problem I ran into was that the brake calipers weren’t long enough, so I swapped over to some Tektro R559 calipers which worked like a charm. Bummer to not have the full group on the bike, but I’m happy with the compromise.
This bike is so joyful to ride, but kind of like a vintage sports car. I take it out in the nice weather, go for a spin in the sunshine, and then get home (hopefully) grateful that nothing broke. I’m grateful I have this bike, but also grateful I have others. Wicked fun bike!
