Sunday, April 12, 2009

Disassembled

The Peugeot is now disassembled. The frame itself, while still hefty, is not as bad as initially thought. The main weight offenders were the wheels and crankset.

The braze-on cable guides and pump stops have been removed by hacksaw and file, and will shortly be off to the bead blasters to get cleaned up for paint.

Disassembled, it is now confirmed that, being a French bike, all the threads and fastenings are arse-about. I get the feeling that they decided to thread it all backwards just to spite the English. This means that we have a French thread bottom bracket (obsolete) and french sized headset (obsolete), stem (obsolete) and handlebar size. Fantastic.

Seeing that the bottom bracket is cactus, along with the headset, there are only a few options for each. The headset is the 'easier' of the two fixes, in that a new fork with a conventional English thread is easy to do. This also means a new stem and bars. Dan  at Shifter Bikes had one kicking around the shop that was the right price.

The options for the bottom bracket are:
1. find a shimano UN72 (removable left and right cups) and use Phil french lock rings
2. use a Phil cartridge bottom bracket, and french lock rings
3. ream and re-threaded the bottom bracket shell to accept a (larger) Italian thread.

I think that the shimano option will work out cheapest, followed equally by option 2 and 3, given the labour to get the shell re-threaded. Also, the Phil option will allow the BB to be reused on another bike in the future, by using the appropriate lock rings.

All the bits are getting expensive - plus I keep getting out-bidded for parts on eBay!









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