ehcoplex 

Finally got out for a 20mi shakedown ride on the '72 Peugeot PX-10 I picked up last fall. The generally terrible roads around me, and frequent stretches of gravel I ride led me to convert to 650b with my first wheel-set build. Red Clover triplizer to handle the hills, SLJ GT to cope with the gearing range.
Going to take me a bit to get reacquainted with friction-shifting, but so far, so good. The SLJ RD and the (cheap) 7sp Sunrace freewheel play together very nicely. Shifting from the granny to the middle ring is a little tricky, but I think I need to play around with the FD more.
The tab on the downtube to keep the shifters from sliding fell off somewhere on the ride. I was afraid it might- it had been JB welded on by the PO and came off when I cleaned up the frame. I tried JB'ing it back on, but it didn't hold, so then I tried super-glue which seemed to do the trick. Alas, no. Not sure what to try now to keep the shifters from moving- I'd rather not get something brazed on and ruin the paint (rough and 'patina'd' as it may be....).
My Shimano quasi-mtb spd shoes don't really work well with the Berthets & clips (I knew they wouldn't). For now I think it'll be cheaper to get some SPD pedals rather than get new shoes, aesthetically egregious as that may be!
The V-O bottle-cages behind the seat don't work so well with SS water-bottles- bottle went flying a couple times when I went over large bumps- I've got some other tighter, more rigid cages that might work.
The ride on the Hetres is very nice and comfy, yet the bike still feels more nimble & sporty than my Cannondale T700. I *think* I can make a set of Zeppelin fenders fit with a bit of dimpling/massaging. Probably will require deflating the rear tire to get it on and off, though, but it gets wet and messy where I ride so it will be worth it.
Bar tape is ugly, but what I happened to have on hand (& yes, the blue electrical tape is awful, I know....) and works for now. Crane Creek hoods don't fit the Mafac levers particularly well, but they were cheap and are doing the job. Bar-end mirror is super fugly too, but I've never been able to make a helmet-mounted mirror work for me.
Mini-rack, decaleur and rando bag to be added. And a pump of some sort.




Stuck to what passes for a moderately flat route around here, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it feels in the hills after some mechanical adjustments!

ehcoplex 

The before-

Velo Mule

That is looking really spiffy @ehcoplex . I like the use of lots of French stuff that works. Pedals, derailleur, shifters, and Stronglight crank. I didn't know that a Tripizer could be had for the star shaped Stronglights. I love them even with two chainrings.

I am thinking that on the braze on stop piece for the shift levers, that when it fell off it left behind a little rusty patch. If you could clean that patch down to clean steel, perhaps you can use a soldering iron to get a little piece of brass soldered to that patch of down tube. If you can get the solder to flow between the down tube and the brass stop, it should hold. I soldered shift cable stops. Since they don't have high loads, it held just fine. I used plumbing solder and flux.

What hubs are they?

This should look great with Zeppelin fenders. Keep the pictures coming.

It looks like you might be able to lower that front derailleur just a tad, or maybe it is just the angle of the picture.

ehcoplex 

The triplizer is pretty cool- very inconspicuous.
Funny you should mention the FD- I was just in the basement tinkering and lowered it. It was positioned where it was as the tail of the FD was hitting the RD cable, but I was able to push the cable-guide down a bit to lower the RD cable closer to the chain stay. Seems to be shifting better now, at least on the stand!
I've got plumbing solder & a butane torch, so maybe I'll give it a try with a little piece of brass.
Velo Orange hubs and rims. I was kinda looking for some French hubs, but then a V-O sale came along a month or so ago, so that's what I went with.

bulgie 

Triplizer by BF's own jonwvara. Properly designed and well made. Check it out (and buy it) here: https://www.redclovercomponents.com/..._42_Teeth.html

Or if you're handy and have some time to waste, you can make your own from a Stronglight 99 chainring, as I did here:



There are downsides, like needing hard-to-find 86 mm BCD granny rings, versus common 74 mm rings like Jon's uses. Mine only goes down to 28t, where Jon's can take a 24t. Mine takes a couple hours of your time, versus Jon's that's just a few clicks and a Visa card away..

Seriously, just buy Jon's. But if you're in love with the idea of an all-vintage-Stronglight solution that could have been pieced together in 1972, then maybe have a look at my Flickr here where I give more info, including which counterbore tool to buy. PM me with any questions not covered there, but honestly if you have to ask, you may not be up for it. You need as a minimum a good bench vise, hacksaw, drill press, files, just the right type of Stronglight 99 ring (or 99 bis, as in the photo), and a very specific counterbore that almost no one has. Lots of sawing, filing counterboring and polishing to make it look like this.

Mark B

jonwvara

That is spiffy, Mark--if I had thought of that myself, I doubt that Red Clover Components would exist, since my initial modest goal was just to have one triplizer to install on the Stronglight 93 on my Raleigh Gran Sport. But once I had one of them in hand and it worked so well, it became my destiny to move on to world domination of the prodigious obsolete-BCD-triplizer market.

To the OP, how would you compare the ride on 650B wheels to that on the originbal 700s (or 27s, not sure which it would have had)?

ehcoplex 

That's a thing of beauty!

ehcoplex 

I can't really make a direct comparison. The bike had 27" out-of-true steel wheels with rotted tires when I got it. It held just enough air just long enough for a couple figure-8s in the driveway when I bought it, but the DRs where out of whack, brakes disconnected, etc, so I wasn't thinking much about how the ride felt!

From starting at 28c and ending up with 38c (biggest that will fit) on my Cannondale when I got back into cycling last year, I know from the riding I do (and my aging joints...) wider is better, so figured I'd see what all the fuss is about Hetres. TBH, I don't feel a huge difference 'cush-wise' between the 38s on my C'dale and the 42s on the PX, but I haven't yet been on any 'real' gravel with the PX and I don't have an accurate pressure guage with a Presta chuck (the other bikes all have Schrader..) and I think I've got the Hetres a little bit over-inflated. Probably 38s would've been fine for me on the PX, but that would've still required the 650B conversion to clear the fork crown, so I figured why not go for the max.

Velo Mule

Also noteworthy is that the original Mafac calipers were able to reach the rim on the 650B. I see that the pad is all the way at the top of the slot with the 27" steel rim and all the way a the bottom with the 65B. That's pretty good that you didn't have to change calipers. Another plus with Mafac's. Please don't let anyone outside of this forum know of this amazing ability. These are already precious.

Most 650B conversion require new calipers of one form or another.

@bulgie that Stronglight crank is mesmerizing. Nice work. Your are right though, if I had a Stronglight crank that needed a little chainring I would go to RedCloverComponents.com so I can focus on better things.

ehcoplex 

Alas, no- If you look closely you'll see those are Mafac Raids on the bike now, Racers didn't have the reach. I was on the fence about doing the conversion, but scored the Raids on eBay France for a good price.
A couple days ago a friend gave me a box of bike stuff from cleaning out an in-law's garage that had some Weinmann Vainqueur calipers, doh! If I'd had those a few weeks ago it would've saved me a little bit of $!

gesta

Very nice pug indeed, and that deep blue color!

Mafac calipers: Racers or Raids?
edit. I was late with that question

Did you need to massage the frame in any way (= dent the chainstays) to fit those Hetres and how are the clearances?

ehcoplex 

Had to go with Raids. No dimpling the chain stays- about 6mm/side clearance at the tire's widest point (with the wheel all the way back in the drop-outs). There'd still be enough clearance with the wheel moved up some, but the original little bolt-in spacers rub the chain on the smallest cog. I might play around with adding a spacer to either side of the axle so there's clearance with the spacers so I can move the wheel up, though I really don't think I would notice any difference at all ride-wise with the wheel moved up. Might help with the fender lines, though....

John E

You didn't like the turkey "safety" brake lever extensions?

ehcoplex 

Ha....... no! However...... I've wondered if the tops of the lower levers got cut down when the 'safety' levers got installed. I assume 'no', because $, but... the reach on these levers seems really long with the 'safety' extensions removed. I've got pretty long fingers, so it's not a big deal. And I'm sure positioning the levers on the bars in a more 'modern' location puts them in a spot there weren't originally designed for.

John E

The long reach is why I personally avoid Mafac, Campagnolo, Modolo, and similar levers, and sacrilegiously put short-reach Shimanos on my Bianchi and on the PKN-10 while I had it, and why I like the OEM Weinmanns on my Carlton and Capos. If you indeed have hands like Sergei Rachmaninoff's, no problem ... . I can operate longer-reach levers, but I cannot confidently and firmly grab them quickly for a panic stop.

ThermionicScott 

Very cool build. Arguably still fulfilling its original purpose, but more comfortable and capable now. You could skip the fenders and bags and leave it as a go-fast bike if you wanted.

ehcoplex 

Maybe it's just because it's 'new' (to me), or just different, but the PX-10 sure does feel more fun than my Cannondale.....! Waiting for some bits from boltdepot to get the zeppelin fenders properly mounted. A bit of a shame to break the aesthetics and take the Berthets off, but the SPD pedals are much more comfortable and convenient. I've pretty much blown through my bicycle budget for '22 already, but some Retrofriction levers are on my list, as well as an appropriate pump. And at some point a taller rando bag so I can incorporate a decaleur (the Acorn on there now is kinda kludge'd on with straps & bungies).



Ugh, looking at the photo those hoods look awful! I really wish Rustines would start selling Mafac hoods again....

hokiefyd 

What a great resto-mod, with a stunning result! Cheers!

beicster 

That is a beauty. Have you figured out what you want to do about the shifters? I once installed a set just below the tab by accident on my old Trek and could not get them to stay in place. They just slid down the tube over time. If I were in your shoes, I would wrap the down tube in some cotton handlebar tape to see if the shifters like that better before I would try brazing a tab on there.

ehcoplex 

There's a rough spot where the tab was JB'd & superglued on which seems to provide enough purchase to keep the band from slipping. I'll see if that holds up for now, but I suspect it may rub off after which I'll try some tape before trying to braze or solder something on. I'm on the fence about Retrofriction down-tube shifters or some sort of bar-ends. On the one hand I'm getting (re)used to the DTs, and Retrofrictions would keep things French, but on the other hand bar-ends would make more (& possibly safer) sense for the kind of mixed-surface riding a regularly do..

ehcoplex 

V-O Zeppelin fenders installed. Lots (& lots, & lots......) of put-em-on, check, take-em-off, massage/adust, repeat, repeat, repeat! At the moment the rear tire has to be deflated to remove the wheel, but I think I can do something at the chain-stay bridge mount with a spring or removable rubber stopper so that the fender will move forward to get the wheel out.... Or just live with deflating. A couple little details of note (that may assist future readers....)- Old-school nut-and-bolt stay-mount at the dropouts interfered with the chain on the small sprocket, so I tapped the drop-out eyelets to take an M6 bolt. I repurposed a Mafac horizontal-to-vertical brake-mount adapter to create a mount at the seat-stay bridge. I hesitated for a couple seconds, as these adapters apparently go for $30 on eBay, but used it anyway. It required slightly boring out the mounting hole and grinding off a tiny bit of the lip on the threaded hole. The daruma that came with the fenders was too short (there seems to be a real need for longer darumas out there, but no source.....), so I cut it down a bit and added a trimmed-down coupling to create a threaded receptacle for a button-head bolt from under the fender. This series of blog posts was very helpful in the process. Only a couple rides up and down my (very rocky, rough and bumpy) driveway, but so far no rattles. Not exactly an elegantly-tight French fit with the lines, but I ride a fair bit on gravel and think the extra clearance is a good thing.

Dfrost 

How about a cut down wine fork for the CS bridge fender mount? Haven’t used or needed one myself, but often recommended to give just a bit of compliance for tire removal.

And if it was from a bottle of French wine, it would work even better on this pretty bike!

ThermionicScott 

I don't know if it's irresponsible for me to suggest this, but I cut the corners out of this VO Zeppelin and carefully filed/sanded all the edges smooth, and it hasn't cracked in several years of riding:

ehcoplex 

I was very close to doing this, but decided to live with mounting with a nylon spacer and having to deflate for now. Truth is that if/when things are well dialed in I don't expect to be taking the rear wheel off/on very often, so having to pump isn't that big of a deal.

ehcoplex 

I have a feeling a cork wouldn't last very long (at least not a real cork, synthetic might fare better), but it may be worth a try. Of course it may take several bottles to find just the right French cork for the job....