Hello all,
I recently purchased this bicycle on craigslist because I needed a simple commuter bike but it has no decals or any distinguishing features aside from the solitary serial that I found on the bottom of the bottom bracket. If you need any more pictures let me know. Any help would be greatly appreciated; thanks in advance.









The seller said she thought it was a Peugeot, if that's any help.

Is there any badge/decal on the headtube? Is so, a picture of that area would help.

Close up picture of the lugs (headtube and seatpost areas)?

Looks like a basic boomer bike from the 70s, steel cottered crank, bolted axle (rear) and wing nut axle (front), steel rims. Not passing judgment on that, as I have a couple of 1970s era boomer bikes myself, both Peugeots. My Peugeots have more intricate lugs than the ones on your bike.

Derailleur is likely to have a date code. You can look up the codes on the vintage Trek site: www.vintage-trek.com

How many speeds (rear cogs: 5, 6, 7?). 5 speed would be 1970s vintage.

There are a couple of good vintage Peugeot sites out there. I don't see a bike that looks like yours, but I could be missing it. There are a lot of Peugeot experts on this list. www.retropeugeot.com
www.peugeotshow.com
www.cyclespeugeot.com

Alas, there isn't anything of interest on the headtube, but I found the serial on my rear derailleur (couldn't find one on the front) and traced it to an '82 production date. The derailleurs are both Shimano though, so I'm not sure whether they're original or not. Also, it's a 10-speed (5 rear, 2 front).

As for the pictures:





I did notice that Peugeot lugs are more intricate than these, but I didn't know if those were universal.

Once again, thanks for the help and sorry there's so little to go on.

It looks like a department store brand to me. I can't tell for sure, but in the pics it looks like the rear dropouts are crimped into the stays. Can we get a closeup of this area?

The onle thing that I can tell you for sure is that the angle of the cable stop hanger for the rear brake needs to be adjusted. There will be a lot of binding in it, at that angle.

5 speed usually means 1970s or earlier.

Stem shifters more like late 70s.

Could be a "bitsa" bike (motorcycle term), constructed of a bit of this, and a bit of that.
Nothing wrong with that, I have several bitsa bikes that I put together using a variety of donor bikes.

Lugs look too plain for a Peugeot, although some had pretty simple lugs. The mid and early 70s Peugeot had pretty eloborate lugs, even on bottom end bikes, not sure why.

I would guess a generic department store bike, with miscellaneous replacement parts. The lack of rivet holes in the head tube means either someone took the time to fill them in (doubtful) or it had some generic decal in the past (very likely).

Looks like a bike that meets your requirements. It doesn't have to be some high end classic to be a good daily rider.

The pic below is from my 1975 U08 (near bottom end Peugeot). Notice that the headset also looks quite a bit different than yours.

It may of just dropped in from outer space.

I'm guessing that is not the original paint and have to say that very early 70's would not be too far off the mark and department store bike would be even closer to the mark. It looks very similar to my 1971 Bridgestone which was sold at the time by Sears and manufactured by the Japanese company C. Itoh who also sold bicycles under their own C. Itoh brand. Mine had a Shimano Lark SS rear derailleur and Simplex downtube shifters before I removed the cottered cranks and converted it to single speed. It was a great riding and very nimble frame with straight bars replacing the cheapo drops it came with. Here are a few pics. Check out the lugs and the rear dropouts.