The add read "For Sale TA Cranks $100 - must take mixte frame they are attached to."
It seems the fellow didn't have a TA crank extractor and wanted to get rid of the mixte anyway.
"Easy enough" I thought. "I'll remove the cranks for one of my Motobecane Le Champion projects and find someone to dump the mixte on."
But that's when the mixte began to work her magic on me. It wasn't just a frame: It still had its Simpex shifters, Mafac Racer brakes and those cute little white brake levers, not to mention the stem with the lion and some pretty nice upright bars. The stays and fork blades were pretty beat up though. That's when the idea of the saddle shoe paint job hit me. One can of medium brown paint ought to do the job; okay maybe a gold paint pen for lining the lugs too. "Besides if it looks crummy I can just dump the whole project without having spent too much on it."
The paint job wasn't perfect, but close enough to make the mixte look pretty darn cute. Next ensued a couple hours of cleaning and polishing. I had some of that fancy Brooks leather bar tape sitting around on a Motobecane fixie I had bought to restore to it's former 10-speed glory. That made a pretty posh set of hand grips.
But I had to actually spend real money on the Rolls saddle from ebay. Thanks to Catnap I soon had in my possession a nice Simplex long cage derailleur. The pedals really should be French too but I had to save money somewhere and they were sitting around on the same Motobecane fixie mentioned above. The wheels came from a local friend for $50.
Yeah I should have replaced the Suntour front derailleur with something French also, but it works fine and at this point I'll be lucky to get out of the bike what I've put into it. Cyclomondo supplied the old-style Peugeot decals which are completely the wrong era for this bike. Call it artistic liberty or further proof of my utter disregard for tradition: I think they look nice on this bike. The headbadge is missing its chrome trim but still gives the bike some more character and gave me my cue for using the red cable housing.
I guess I'll have to buy another TA crank set for that Le Champion.
Brent