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I am tearing down, cleaning, re greasing and reassembling a 1977 or 78 Peugeot road bike. I wanted something that would qualify for the classic road bike get togethers that are becoming more fashionable. I still have to take the fork off. The spindle has loose ball bearings. I imagine the head set also has loose ball bearings. Someone gave it to me but there is no such thing as a free bike.
Before:
During:
After not done yet.
I cleaned the frame on the Peugeot with Simple Green. I used a soft brush and my fingernail to get rid of the stubborn baked grease clay combo. The stubborn places took 3-4 treatments. Then I used Brasso on all the bright work, no buffing just a gentle polish with a toothbrush and cloth. I still want it to show some age. Then I rubbed a blue crayon over the chips to fill them in, then auto polish and a final touch up with the blue crayon. I have to disassemble it a little more, then I will coat the frame and fork with Penatrol, a drying oil used for a lot of things, including prevention of rust in marine environments. Once the Penetrol dries it will encapsulate and protect the crayon wax. I feel this is better than clear coat or touch up with Testors model paint or nail polish as that always looks bad. Some people just spray clear coat on the chips to prevent further rust but Penetrol does it better and leaves a nice shine.
Result so far with the crayon and auto wax. Lots of filled scratches and chips as you can see, especially on the right chain stay. The filled in areas are less noticeable than the photographs.
The allen head on the Peugeot gooseneck bolt was stripped round. I sat down and wondered what a smart guy would do. The best I could come up with was to weld an allen driver onto the gooseneck bolt.
It came loose with a pop after pretty heavy force was applied. Welding eroded the alloy on the area of the allen bolt. It was recessed a little, which made it impossible to avoid some erosion. The french wedge bolt has a finer thread than other metric wedge bolts. I found a wedge bolt that fit into the odd sized French fork tube. My other wedge bolts were just a hair too big, I though I was going to have to do a little grinding but I got lucky. The new allen bolt head was just a hair too big to fit into the gooseneck recess so I gently ground off the chrome plating and it now fits snuggly. The new allen gooseneck bolt was much shallower that the original ruined French one, which is good because I plan to remove by filing the alloy around the eroded area to eliminate it and the bolt head will still be recessed.
