Here is my new (to me) Mercier "Special Tour de France," the frame of which I inherited from a friend who was moving:
Getting the bike up and running without spending money has required some delightfully ghetto engineering solutions: I had some three-speed coaster brake wheels I wanted to use, but they have 26" rims (old Raleigh style), and I know that 26" rims on a bike made for larger wheels = pedal strike. So I took a flat steel rod ($6.99 at Home Depot) and cut two adapters that bolt into the rear dropouts and lower the axle about an inch:
Then I had to face the problem of the seatpost. When my friend gave me the bike, it had a very short seatpost with no diameter marking on it. Not wanting to spring for a new post (and also, feeling a little uncertain that I was measuring correctly), I just cut the old post into a long shim, then wedged a straight handlebar with a slight rise into the seat tube with the shim, cranked down the binder bolt really hard, and added a collar and quick release lever to squeeze the top part of the shim around the handlebar/post. If you look closely at the top picture of the bike, you can see that the post seems to lean forward - that is the slight rise of the handlebar. Here's a closeup of the two-clamp system:
So far, so good. I took it on a 40-mile ride on Sunday, and rode it three miles to work today. And most importantly, the bike looks smooth.