I found this Peugeot Record du
Monde at a garage
sale, bought it for the grand total of $10, and now have yet another
project.
It seems to be a mid-70s creation and, except for some problems noted
below,
it's a nice bike. The frame is some kind of lightweight steel alloy,
not
mild steel, and the bars, stem, crank, and so on are aluminum. This
bike
is a notch above the ordinary, 70s bike-boom creations, but maybe not a
big notch.
The problem is deciding what to do with it. It's probably not worth the effort of a classical restoration, but, since it's not very significant, maybe I can do something a little quirky. We'll see what happens.
As usual, click on a thumbnail to see a larger
image. Use
the "back" button on your browser to return to this page.
Cute trick that, using a brake cable for the gears. The drive train is a little funky; the left crank arm is a Sakae, and the right, a Peugeot. Hmmm....
I noticed immediately that the brakes probably had been replaced, since no noble Frenchman would ever design Japanese brake calipers onto a French bike, much less match them with Weinmann levers. Also, interestingly, the wheels were different: an older Mavic rim with galvanized spokes on the back, and a newer Mistral with stainless steel spokes on the front. Hmmm....
A close look at the fork explains it all. The fork is bent; the bike has been in a wreck! Probably the front was hit hard, destroying the wheel and brake caliper, and bending the fork. The Mistral is a replacement, and the brakes were replaced as a pair. The odd left crank arm might also be a repair, but if the crank arm were damaged, it must have been quite a hit. I notice also that the top tube is slightly bowed downward, but there are none of the usual telltale bulges behind the head tube.
I pull the fork to see if it is salvageable. The bend is in the crown, not the tubes, so it's not clear how easy it will be to fix. The steering tube is very slightly bent, but not to the point of uselessness: it's only about 0.3 mm out of line along its entire length. (It might have been that bad when it was new; after all, this is a French bike.) A greater concern is a deep gouge where the upper bearings have damaged the tube. It's about 0.7 mm deep, half the tube's 1.5 mm wall thickness. How could this happen? When I took it apart, it looked like a couple of the balls might have been out of the race. Or, perhaps the bearings were loose for a long time. Either way, I can't believe it didn't feel pretty awful.
I was charmed to see the derailleur cable stop held on by a hose clamp.
Also, a few pictures of high-class French fabrication:
This is so bad that it's cynical. Did the people at Peugeot really think that it was fine to give customers such sloppy work, or did the workers just have a little too much Beaujolais for lunch?
The seat post is stuck as well; icing on the cake. It's a junky seat post, badly oxidized. First, I try using penetrating oil to loosen it. After a week's soak, no luck, and I break my vise trying to budge it. Finally, I saw it off and cut two slots into it from the inside. Even then, it takes a lot of force with a pipe wrench to loosen it, but with a resounding crack, it finally gives way. (Incidentally, I don't recommend this technique for any high-end frame or especially any aluminum frame, since it's too easy to gouge the inside of the tube.) Finally, I ream the sloppily finished seat tube to a more useful 26.8 mm instead of the French pseudostandard 26.4 mm.
So, what to do with it? Life has been complicated for me of late, so the bike sat in my garage, disassembled, for a couple of years. In early 2008 I took it out and used it for some painting experiments. The first was an attempt to create a candy finish, which was a dismal failure. I also tried just painting it with aluminum paint, to create a silver effect, but the paint was soft, and I couldn't find a clear coat that would adhere. I gave up on the fork and got an inexpensive chrome one to replace it. I'll probably just give it a decent paint job, add some new frame artwork (although not as detailed as the original, of course) perhaps after inventing my own whimsical name for it (how 'bout Great Disasters Bicycle Company?), find some components, and give it to someone.