History mystery of Simplex Huret Campagnolo Maillard
 

Hi I'm just starting to learn more about vintage Peugeots. These vintages bikes come with different brand names parts. How are these brands rated or were they available certain eras until better parts came from others such as Shimano or Suntour perhaps. Can someone sign post to a link please if this has been explained before? Thank you.

sheldonbrown.com - "the Moses" of bicycle lore and history.

Thank you. Will look at his site again. Seems that different folks have somewhat leanings about certain brands i.e. love hate relationship with Campy s parts. Why? Or love for Simplex gear set over Huret or versa vice...

Prior to the 70s, a lot of those French brands were among the most respected in bicycles- once the Bike Boom of the 70s hit, a lot of the lowest end products of those brands became common- so what people knew about them was their "cheap" stuff.

Add into that, as the Japanese became dominant in the market, French sizes and threading was no longer standard, so you couldn't use some things with other things.

Add into that Simplex's pechance for using plastic on parts that shouldn't be made of plastic.

Mix into that the reputation for even the high end French stuff to be problematic because of engineering failures and plastic and soft metal and weird sizes and...

But a lot of good French stuff is REALLY good, if you have something it'll work on and give it a chance.

Symplex non-Delrin products work fine IMHO.

As previously stated, a lot of people embrace Sheldon Brown's viewpoints as gospel. Some of SB's biases that some bikers embrace without challenge:

No need to remove a BB fixed cup.
Raleighs are coolest. (nice, but no better than other mass brands)
French have weird standards, parts are hard to find, and need for special tools (so does Raleigh, Campy, etc).
Etc.

Thanks GB and OddJ. Think I need to take massive chill and enjoy my bikes. I miss riding my '82 P10 when I moved her to a more secure fully enclosed bike storage. Very little rust but tad too short for me. I enjoy my '78/79 14speed in teal colour. Heavy but she gets me about my coastal town. Currently bidding on clean red Equipe in my size. Will cost $90 I hope then add train fare to get her...

In addition to what's said above, consider that most bicycle-producing economies were devastated by WW2 and in the post-war years relied on this newly rebuilt industry (among others) to export their way out of debt.
For many years bicycles were built completely from parts made within one country. This began to change first in the UK, only later in France and Italy.
Meanwhile, bicycles continued to reflect some national characteristics or specialties; IGH's came from England or Germany, cheap derailleurs came from France, and so on.

Check out "disraeli gears" (the website, not the Cream album).

Check out the album too. ;)

It is not hard to deal with many of the hard metric dimensions of French parts and framesets.

1. It is very easy to sand a standard 7/8" / 22.2mm stem to fit into a French fork steerer tube designed for a 22.0 stem.
2. It is easy to tap the 14mm/1.25mm pedal threads of a French crank to accept standard 9/16"x20TPI pedals.
3. It is easy to elongate the mounting holes of a standard 130mm BCD chainring to fit a Nervar Star crank's 128mm BCD.

Except that the more common French BCD is 122mm. Just sayin' ;)