Peugeot track build

No reply yet, but a decision on the group. I bought those Maillard pedals (pics soon) and here's one half of the Spidel crankset:

...so it's going French. Shopping for headset and bb now.

Hi,

My name is Jacques Suire and my father, jacques Suire was the track champion.

I built this bike and it is not a Peugeot but at this time we were sponsorized by Peugeot.

This frame was not with the rear brake so maybe it was modified later. It was used by one of our racer that was in the French sprint team and was second at the world championship. Is name was Michel Cortinovis. The blue color was due to the French team.

We have kept some originals decals, so if you need some, I can send you some.

Best regards,

Jacques Suire

^ If ever there was a good reason to keep original paint.

Jacques - thank you for your message and for replying to my email. Really interesting to hear about the frame. Obviously this news changes everything and I will be restoring this exactly as I found it - I have sent another little email with a few more little questions so I get the detail right. Hope you don't mind!

Simpson79 - you're not wrong. Trouble is the frame is corroding badly and that chainstay bridge really needs a repair. Whoever drilled it did a terrible job - looks like they took about four attempts to get the hole right and really messed it up. I will, however, be very sympathetic in the resto.

I think I have a new favourite bike...

that is a great story.. wow, lucky lucky find! indeed, that made it easy to make the mind up..

I am on transtit at Amsterdam, comming from Minsk were I raced for the European track master (I win the title for the 500 TT, team sprint, second place at the point race, 3rd at the scratch and 4 th at the sprint...long week!)

I will do my best to help you for this bike!

This is truly incredible.

The sprint team final (I am on second position)

Championnat d europe minsk piste 2012 - YouTube

That is a busy week! Great video too. Makes me want to bring the bike to France when it's finished to have you ride it. Thanks again for the help - have a good trip.

This is awesome.

rat-racer, somebody in the CP thread has just been talking about a brake bridge they got replaced at Oak Cycles and are very happy with, all done in a day as well. Sounds like a decent solution, you could get them to look over the corrosion as well.

This thread just got so much more awesome.

Paul,

Back home after one week in a strange world. Bielarussia is ......Bielarussia.

About the frame :

It was used from 1978 to 1983/84. In fact, Peugeot never build track frame and they asked some small factories to build them.

This frame was build by myself. My father was building road frame and I was building track frames. we had a shop (still alive but sell to another guy that kept the name) and we were official dealer for Peugeot motorcycles and bikes.
We were also builder for custom frames and for specialy for our team for track racing.
As we were most of the team also in the French track team, it was decided with to paint them with the official color of the French team (the French team does not have at this time an official sponsor for bikes and each rider must have is bike).

Parts used on bikes where mainly "Campagnolo" for cranks and hubs, Cinelli for handelbars and stems (chromed steel), rims where campagnolo 36, 38 or 40 spokes for sprint, sometimes for training Mavic "GP4".
We also used 18mm mavic rims with Dugast very small 18mm tubulars.

Maillard parts and spidel were also used for our bikes. Spidel where used mainly for pursuit and point races as cranks where 170 or 175 mm and Campagnolo were difficult to find on these sizes.

Give me an adress, I will send you some our "NOS" decals and forget about price, it will be a pleasure for us to see one of our bike with them!
I will scan and send you some some pictures as soon as possible.
Best,
Jacques

This is my bike ( quite the same than yours) during the KM regional championship. You can see that Peugeot was on the frame and small tubes (light weight!)

Michel Cortinovis on the left side, the other rider is Eric Garbay and I took the picture after we win the team sprint. You can see that the bike was new, so without decals and with another fork as the original was to the chrome factory!

Jacques, this is so interesting, thank you. Amazing to see those photographs (do let me know if you have any more!) and thanks for the information on the parts you used. I'll send you an email with my address and maybe a few thoughts on how I'll build up the bike. One thing's for sure, those forks are going back to get rechromed...

Time for a little update. After a few emails discussing the likely components used on the bike back in the day (thanks Jacques), it seems that because there was little official sponsorship (besides the Peugeot decals), a mix of parts may have been used including Campagnolo, Spidel, Stronglight, Cinelli, Maillard and Mavic.

It looks for now like keeping it French where possible might be the right thing to do, so at the moment the Maillard hubs, pedals and Spidel cranks are shortlisted, while I check the brands of bottom bracket and headset that were fitted up to the frame. There's the smallest chance these may have been the originals that Jacques fitted (you never know) so maybe we can work out the likelihood of that before shopping for replacements.

Then it looks like digging deep for a Cinelli pista bar/stem set, some Mavix GP4 rims and maybe I'll use a Campagnolo seatpost and bolt. Still mulling that over. Will post some more pictures soon.

Cracking thread chaps... can't wait to see how it turns out!

Once this is finished, Jacques/Paul, you guys need to catch up for a beer!

Loving this too!
Bike should be something really special when it's finished!

Plan at the moment looks like making the maiden velodrome ride (once the restoration is complete) in its French hometown. Really looking forward to that! Maybe hire a van and a bunch of us from the forum can go down if anyone's interested. Will think about that nearer the time.

Tommmmmmm - forgot to say thanks for the Oak Cycles tip. Will be calling them soon for a chat.

You're welcome, can't wait to see it develop.

Also the forum van trip to the velodrome sounds grand, count me in!

In. If its before the end of September.

bodieanddoyle - I'll do my best, but none of my previous bike builds have been particularly well noted for their speed... fingers crossed. One thing that will help is the envelope that arrived this morning from Jacques:

An amazing supply of NOS decals and world championship bands. Am now sketching out a few options for placement.

Fantastic bike, great story - best CP thread IMO - keep up the good work sir!

Rik, very kind of you to say that but I think this thread will have to work a bit harder to eclipse your L'Eroica adventures...

There's clearly something of a mutual appreciation going here as I'm pretty impressed with your Falcon-Merckx-rat and that new Motobecane!!!

Right, so a new conundrum. The decals are all on the vertical so none will fit comfortably on the downtube as per the original style above. Obviously I'd rather use original stickers that Jacques sent than make up some horizontal ones to exactly reproduce the original look, but how authentic should this build be?

Speaking to Jacques, he suggested that the sticker arrangements were a bit of a lottery at the time and I shouldn't worry about it. I thought I might put one Jacques Suire decal on each side of the seat tube with world champion bands top and bottom, then use a 'Peugeot' decal (a gold version of the ones on the orange pack shown further up this thread) on each side of the downtube in the conventional place.

The only thing against this is that the original set up had a Peugeot sticker on the top tube, on just one side. This was because it was a sponsorship requirement and they cared only about the side most spectators could see in the velodrome. I rather like that. But will the bike look odd with no downtube stickers? Or shall I just put one on one side of the downtube?

So many questions... any thoughts?