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Thanks both. It’s a wrench to sell it but due to a change in circumstances I’ll only ever end up hanging it on a wall. Let’s be honest, I’ve owned it for over a decade and haven’t managed to get much past collecting the parts. It needs to be with someone who loves it. And rides it.

Nice work. Keen to see this.

Meanwhile, here’s a pic of the Jacques Suire shop back in the day (thanks Jacques) with the road racing team assembled outside. Love that Peugeot support vehicle.

The advice has been a mix of Campagnolo and Spidel, for which I have gathered a decent haul of parts. I’m planning an inventory check from the storage boxes so I’ll post some pics very soon.

Ha! Got to be worth a try. 🤔

Yep, agreed. Trouble is all the stickers are vertical – they read downwards rather than left to right. To place one on each side on the downtube would mean creating reproduction stickers, rather than using the NOS ones as shown in the pic.

Which may be the best thing to do…

I guess the debate here is whether to (a) use original NOS decals, exactly as would have been used in the day, or (b) get some reproduction decals made that match exactly the bike as I found it. I'm leaning towards the former.

As a side note, Jacques has been helping me to answer this question. He sent me a picture from the period showing another of the team bikes that uses the same decals but in different places – so it seems they placed them according to what was available rather than in consistent locations. This makes sense given their criteria was to show the sponsor (Peugeot) logos and those of his father's bicycle shop which ran the team at the time (Jacques Suire).

Anyway, here's the pic of Jacques at qualification for a national kilometer sprint race back in the day, which he won:

Hello folks. The frame is now unboxed and dusted down; I’ve attached a pic. I’d forgotten how nice that blue looked – faithful to the original shade but with a very subtle metallic effect. Hard to show in the photos.

You’ll also see the collection of decals. I plan to cut the ‘J’ and ‘S’ initials for the seat tube with the Olympic stripes above and below, plus put the Peugeot on one side of the top tube as per the original as shown way back at the top of this thread.

As we don’t have ‘Jacques Suire’ decals that read left to right (you may remember the man himself kindly sent me some NOS decals left over from his father’s business back when this bike was first built and I’m keen to use these) I am considering placing one centrally on the down tube as per the second picture. The rest of the stickers will find their natural homes.

I’m very lucky after all these years to have reconnected with Mr Suire over email who has kindly agreed to consult with the rebuild so that it is reimagined as close to period spec as possible.

Onwards! More updates soon.

Has it really been a decade since I started this thread? I'll spare the details, but my bicycle collection went into storage for a few years and a recent relocation from London to Bath has given me the opportunity to unpack.

That means this build is back ON.

I'm reviewing the posts here and the email thread between myself and Jacques about the spec of the bike from its French sprint competition days in the late ’70s, plus dusting off the haul of parts I'd collected before life took over. I've also reached out to Jacques to see if his email address is still active, in the hope I can share the renewed progress with him.

Right, to work. Stand by for pics.

Very nice.

Unbelievable. It's been another year since I last posted about this project and I've no excuses besides distractions at work. Funny that the top of this thread says the project might be a 'slow burn' but three years is, well, ridiculous...

We have good news now, though. The frame is home and with fresh paint – a blue close-ish to the original and without decals, so I can apply over the lacquer just as the frame was originally (those stickers were only ever 'functional' and for sponsors and rider name anyway). As I mentioned moons ago I'd have liked to have kept the original paint but it was too far gone and the frame needed some repair, hence the reluctant respray.

The forks are blue now too as the chrome had all but eaten itself, which is a shame. Worth mentioning that I'm tempted to think of this paint as semi-temporary anyway – I want this built up for lots of track time and I've a feeling a further frame restoration will be on the cards at some point, with chrome, once it bears the scars of good use again.

Those that have followed this ridiculously ageing thread from a few years back will also know that Jacques Suire (son of the French national champion that used to own this bike) has kindly sent me lots of NOS decals from his father's old workshop, which adds a nice air of originality (and plenty to repaint the frame 10 times over). These will be applied next, along with the original Peugeot decals used for the sponsor (on one side only, too – the side the crowd could see).

Also by way of recap, I have NOS Spidel hubs, Maillard pedals, NOS Wolber tubs, NOS Spidel track cranks (they took AGES to find) and some NOS Mavic GP4s on the way. The rest still needs buying, so I'll be rinsing the eBay account in the coming weeks. Keen to hear from any French bike fans that may have useful bits laying around.

Anyway, here's a pic of the frame I took roadside in a pub at Waterloo on the way home from Mario's last night – I'll get some 'proper' pics once it's unwrapped and I set about the decals. Note that the colour isn't well represented in the early evening light, ’tis closer to the original blue than it looks...

Just (finally!) dropped off my Mistral to Mario for paint. Project is go again now... :)

Really enjoying this build, lovely job. Going to need some chroming work myself soon – looking at the pic above I take it you'd recommend London Chroming?

Don't know how I missed this post all those months ago. Nice build, glad the frame found a good home.

Stunning build, congrats.

Thanks for the offer but it's a little too big.

Perfect. Will PM. Thanks.

I'm after a 57/58cm low/mid range frame for a friend's build. Something 501 or perhaps 531 will do it, main thing is not to break the bank. Ideally I'm thinking £75 max. Will consider cheaper-than-Reynolds steel too if it saves a few quid.

Ta.

Bath-based former Londoner. Serial restorer of vintage (mostly fixed/singlespeed) bicycles and the odd classic car. Works in digital, plays with a bicycle thing on Twitter when there's time.

So I thought you guys might be interested in a little side project I've been working on called Primal Fixed. It's a bit of an experiment in editorial and branding (since I work in digital and always seem to be doing stuff for other people), and somewhere for me to witter on about (mostly) fixed and singlespeed bikes and builds, besides here.

I've also teamed up with a friend who runs a leather shop called Born+Bred in Brighton and we designed a few accessories – first of a few small product collaborations I hope. And we're also supporting a friend who's just left Brighton to cycle to New Zealand for Diabetes UK.

Anyway, if you're curious, find the blog at primalfixed.cc or follow on Twitter. Always keen to hear feedback too. Many thanks...

What the hell, dibs please.

PM on way

Nice work David, congrats.

Oh god. Someone buy these. Please.

Maybe a pale blue metallic. Component-wise, I have a Shimano Arabesque groupset, but I may build it fixed. Will take some pics tonight.