Peugeots are pretty. And they are hard to pronounce. But other than that, I know little about them. After a bit of Wikipedia research, I learned that Peugeot is the most successful factory team of the Tour de France, winning the race a record 10 times. While Peugeot bikes were really popular in the late 70's and 80's (I believe the baby I got is a late 70's bike but that is just what most people have guessed) but it seems that nowadays, people are more interested with finding old Peugeots and fixing them up rather than buying new ones. There is something appealing about bringing back a vintage bike that was the top of the line at the time, and though oddly outdated now, still seems timeless. I want to take this rusty, old 70's Peugeot and bring it back to the glory days. I have this vision of melding old and new, vintage and cutting edge, to create one mean, lean riding machine. Easier said than done...
When I first took my dilapidated frame to Firehouse bikes, the same place I first fell in love a Peugeot, I was expecting to get some good advice on how to bring new life to this bike. I mean, that is what they DO there. When I showed the woman working there my frame and told her that i was interested in fixing it up, she began her nay saying. "Well, you see thats an OLD French bike, only compatible with OLD French parts. If you are looking to build a road bike from that, you are looking at a nearly impossible task. You're talking months of frustration, loads of money and in the end it probably won't be worth it." Helpful, very helpful. My only response was "Good to hear" as I cracked a sarcastic smile and walked out the door with my baby. I'll show her...I'll go to bike church, where anything is possible.
I went to bike church the following week. I got downstairs, excited and ready to work. My first task was to take off the rusty old bottom bracket (basically the part where the pedals attach to the bike). I put my bike on the stand when a blonde mustached, young, hipstery bike volunteer came over to me. I thought, now here is a man who can give me some inspiration. I told him I was looking to build this old frame into a new road bike. He looked at it, rubbed at some of the rusty spots and then his nay saying began. "Yeah, I tried to build up a Peugeot one time. It was a horrible experience, really frustrating. You see, these bikes are French threaded so you can only use French parts that are threaded the same, which are hard to find. It took me forever to complete the bike and I had to use a threadless bottom bracket which now is rickety and doesn't ride right. This project, if not impossible, is nearly impossible. But you can give it a try if you want." Awesome. If you can't get inspiration from a hipster who says fuck it to all rationality and does his own thing, who can you get inspiration from? "Well, I guess I'm in for a fun project then", I said as i began examining the rusted bottom bracket, trying to think of how best to remove it. I'll show him, I thought. I'll show everyone....
A few minutes later, this crazy old dude with a home made Archie hat came over to help me with my bike. He saw how hopeless I looked and he decided to help me out. Little did I know his dedication to my cause. Now let me tell you a bit about the crankset (petals and front gears) and the bottom bracket (part where the crankset attaches on the bike) of this bike. I'll try to clarify any hip bike lingo that I learned along the way. This particular old bike has a codder pin holding the crankset on, (in other words, its a pain in the ass to get off, and even worse when it is rusted to the point of being unrecognizable). While I thought the codder pin seemed too rusted to remove, Archie, begged to differ. He rummaged through the tool drawer until he found a special codder pin remover. We removed one side, no problem. But...the other side, was another story.
What I did not realize when I bought the bike, which is probably why I was sold this bike by a guy who fixes up bikes for a living, was that "someone" had already tried to remove the codder pin and bent it so that it was unable to be removed by the normal tool. Archie, seemed unphased. He had a plan. He attempted to use what he referred to as a "sacrificial nut" placed within the clamping, codder pin remover to unbend the pin as we twisted the tool. This brought us closer to the goal, but in the end it too failed. At this point, Blonde mustache nay sayer man, who I later found out to BE FRENCH!!! (named Pierre of course) was intrigued at the difficulty of my project and came back over to help. Another volunteer also floated over, realizing that my project was escalating into a war between man and machine. The two younger volunteers attempted to use a hammer and screwdriver to unbend the pin, while Archie, the seasoned veteran, went to find other tools. He came over to my bike, unclamped it while one of the younger guys was still trying to hammer the pin, and took it over to a table where he had set up a metal sander. The days of trying to coax that pin out were over. He was gonna nuke the little fucker. I wish I had a camera down in that musty basement where bike dreams come true. I can barely describe the scene as Archie blasted away the rusty, 30 year old metal crank that stood between us and the pin. It was a bloodbath. Sparks flew everywhere. The entire bike church stopped and watched as Archie butchered the rusty old crank. He believed in my project. As I watched the sparks fly, I started to believe too. He finally sanded through the crank, through the codder pin, but that little thing still held fast. It took a great deal more hammering before the pin finally let go. And here it is today...
Yeah that was a cylinder once. So finally we got the codder pin out and took off the whole rusty crankset. But we weren't out of the woods yet, there was one piece left in our way. The way that the bottom bracket is constructed, there are two cylindrical pieces that screw into either side of the hole in the bottom part of the bike where the pedals fit. Inside, as I found out after getting one of these pieces off, there are tons of little ball bearings just walking around in there all willy-nilly. One side is easier to take off (pictured center) because it has a lock ring (pictured left) and there is a special tool for that. But after the whole crankset was removed, the only piece left was the one on the right, and it was rusted in there tight.
It probably had not moved since the bike was built, if anything it had only been tightened. So begins part 2 of this ridiculous bike church adventure. I started with a big wrench and a hammer, trying to lock it around the flat edges of the ring and unscrew it. But alas, which way to unscrew? Lefty loosy, right tighty....right? Well, no. Remember that the French are assholes and thus, they must make everything difficult. Of the 4 guys helping me thus far, 2 believed that this bike was old enough that they screwed in the bottom bracket in the same direction as one would pedal the bike (this was before they realized that in doing this, you could essentially unscew the bottom bracket while you road the bike). However, the other 2 believed that it was made after the point in time when the started to screw it in against the pedal motion. I listened to Pierre and Archie since they seemed to know the most and attempted to unscrew to the left. This, proved useless; the thing was stuck.
After 45 minutes of attempting over and over with the wrench and hammer, Archie came back. He once again had a plan. He went into the super specialized tool drawer, and picket out a big crank looking tool that he said was made especially for unscrewing this piece. Basically, the crank part of the tool went on the outside and another piece went through the other side of the bottom bracket and screwed into the crank. Essentially, the big crank tool sandwiched the stuck piece to give more leverage for unscrewing. But the stuck piece was not giving, even with 3 big strong men giving it a go. So we added even more leverage by extending the crank with steel tubes cut from old bike frames. At this point, there were 5 guys trying to unscrew this thing at once while others just stared in awe. There were two people pushing up with all their weight and 3 pushing down. Finally, the thing started to budge a little, as the steel tubing began to bend. When it stopped unscrewing. Pierre and Archie realized, that they were screwing the wrong way. We had actually tightened the thing more. So when we attempted to unscrew it the right way, we bent the tool itself, without moving the piece. Of course, seeing how impossible the task was and that we had just made it worse, people stopped helping and moved on to other, simpler tasks. Archie stayed with me.
We had only one more option, to clamp the crank tool into a table vice and try to spin the bike to unscrew it. This was a last ditch attempt to maximize the torque. We tried to clamp this cylindrical tool as best we could into a vice and 3 of use began pushing with all our weight. After a while, we felt it budge. No one said anything because we didn't actually believe it. We kept pushing and soon began turning the bike. It was working. It became effortless. The three of us smiled and we gingerly turned the bike. loosening the rusted old piece's death grip on the bike. One guy said "it just feels so good" and I replied "yeah, I feel like we are putting so much good energy into the world right now" We could have easily unclamped the contraption and unscrewed the rest by hand, but it felt too good. We all continued to unscrew. Finally, the bike was free. Archie turned to me with a smile and said "now the real project begins". People around me were cleaning up. It had taken 3 hours to get that stupid rusty bracket off. Pierre even came up to me and apologized for being so negative. He wished me luck on the project. I began to believe that in a few months, I might actually be riding a functional bike. I guess I shouldn't jinx it. The real work hasn't even begun.
There it was, the beauty that haunted my dreams, in plain color. I had to have her. The bike was listed with about 15 others on an add for a bike sale in Clark Park. I couldn't risk waiting until the sale to get it, in case someone poached it right underneath my nose. An obsession you say? You call me crazy? I'm not crazy, YOU'RE crazy! I called the guy and told him that I would meet him anywhere if I could just buy the bike ahead of time. So I dipped out of work early and drove to Chester to buy the bike in the middle of the day.
