Road Cycling - Road bike questions...

I recently got a old school Peugeot Carbolite 103 road bike, just to play around with and have been looking into single speed conversion, or not, amongst other things. I basically got the bike cheap to play with, learn more and get into road cycling on a commuter/play level, after riding MTB's for a while.

One of the questions I have at the moment is that I would like to get a new crankset. The bike is a old 10-speed and the crankset has two chainrings. Would a Campy Veloce or something along the lines of a Shimano Tiagra work with the bike? And also, would I have to check the bottom bracket spindle length? Other considerations?

Thanks.

I'll work,but you may have to change the BB or spindle in order to match crank taper and required length. If the BB is european, the tpaer is more likely ISO and a campy crank would be the better bet if the spindle length is right.Changing the BB would require that you know the BB threading.

That old pug most likely has french threads on the bearing, and is therefore incompatible with the BB's that you mentioned.

Alex is right about the threading if you're looking to change BBs. The only new source I know of for French threaded BBs is Phil Wood and that means $. More $ than you'd want to spend on a project like that.

Spindles can be changed w/o replacing bearing races and cups. If you have access to a LBS that's been around awhile they might have a few oldies sitting in a box somewhere.

If you're going singlespeed why mess with a new crank? Get ahold of some washers so you can remove 1 of your 2 chainwheels and still be able to tighten up your chainwheel bolts. Get a new (cheap) chain thread on your cog and go. If your going fixie you'll want a few spacers to get the chainline straight, if it's a single bmx style freewheel you're set.

Cheap and easy and an ideal use fot an old lower-line bike boom special.

Enjoy.

:beer:

Thanks a lot guys. Some nice tips and help there. Much appreciated. I've been looking at single speeds a while now and a friend of a friend has a set-up that I'm going to take alook into, though doing it yourself doesn't seem too bad either.