Le Vélo Parisien

There comes a time in every bike builder’s life when he decides to get a bike for his significant other. Usually as a guise to start yet another project, or as a tool to lure her into getting into cycling, hoping to turn her into the ultimate femme-fatale-on-a-singlespeed. I guess I’m one of those lucky guys whose girlfriend allready knows how to turn a crank, so it didn’t take much persuasion to get her to sign up for a local Flemish cycling event called the ‘Retro Ronde’, a vintage-bicycle and local-foodstops version of the legendary ‘Ronde van Vlaanderen’. The latter she actually completed the amateur version of, so much respect to her etcetera.
However, for this event a vintage bike is required, so the search for something suitable for the missus began. She had never ridden a race bike before, and although I’m sure she could get into it, I wanted to build something specifically for her, something which would meet a few requirements:

1. The bike should be suited to be ridden while wearing a skirt, since that’s what a woman does.
   
2. Cobblestones should be coped with in relative comfort. She told me she would not feel comfortable going down the famous Flemish cobblestones on skinny racetyres (and rightly so, I’d say).
   
3. Looks are prime. Branding or high spec stuff are not required, bright colors and stylish overall looks are.
   
4. Low budget, I’m afraid.
   
5. Bike should be finished by the end of May at the latest, since I can’t keep a secret from her for very long and the event is in June.
   
   

So the search began. Finding a (cheap) nice old racebike to convert is easy enough these days, but I really wanted it to be a mixte frame due to requirement n°1.
After a few weeks, I found what seemed to be a good candidate on a Dutch second hand website. The seller refused to ship the bike to Belgium, so I had to drive to Maastricht to pick it up, but what wouldn’t a man do for his girlfriend, right? 85€ bought me a complete nice blue Peugeot mixte bike with orange decals, mostly in original condition and just a few chips on the paint here and there. An original stem with Peugeot logo was also included, nice!
Obviously, this is not a purebred Italian racesteed, but that isn’t in the requirements list. Instead, this will become a very French ‘porteur’ style bike. At first, I had thought to turn it into a singlespeed for added style and lower weight/maintenance. But after some consideration I decided to keep the rear 5-speed gearing. Just enough to make it up Montmartre, ah oui!

First job was to remove the unnecessary / to be replaced bits, leaving me with an awkward stripped-down version.

I hit the first snag upon removing the front gearing. The derailleur came off without problem, but for the gearing I wanted to keep the inner 40-something tooth chainring, and remove the outer 52t ring. However, the cranks were connected straight onto the big chainring, without a spider or anything so I couldn’t just take off the outer ring. Options were to bin the cranks and get a new set, but this was not according to requirement n°4, and I preferred to keep the original Peugeot-labeled cranks. So I decided to transform the outer chainring into a spider by cutting off the outer part. Some angle-grinder-and-file-action later, and I was happy with the result.

The original cranks and outer chainring:

The finished assembly with inner ring mounted:

Apart from that, every reusable component has been removed, cleaned, polished and reinstalled. Temporary bars, recovered from a local bike place, are on just to get a feel for it.

Orange cable housing has been found locally, other components have been ordered and should all be delivered this week, so I’m hoping to have it finished by next week!

• French porteur-style handlebars.
  
• Dia Compe reversed brake levers and matching grips.
  
• Cream colored 1.2inch wide Schwalbe Spicer tyres for added style and comfort.
  
• An attractively priced showroom model Brooks B17S saddle.
  
  

Update should come soon, any thoughts or comments are welcome :)

L.