I commute on a variety of vintage 10 speeds, one of which I turned into a rixed gear. You can really commute on anything. I see people using ratty old Bmx bikes to get around. I also use to commute on a children's mountain ime with 24 inch wheels. I'm glad I upgraded from that bike but it did have its pluses.

some things that could help us guide you
how long is the commute?
whats the road like? Potholes, dirt trails, gravel...?
are you going to ride all year, winter and rain included?
where are you going to keep the bike at work?
how much bike mechanic work can you do or do y ou want to do? People on c&v will help you do anything on a vintage bike.

Vintage road bikes from Japan are for the most part a decent bike. Steel frames make for a smooth ride for they absorb the bumps better the aluminum and carbon. ( of course all bikes under a Brooks saddle are comfortable) I can go to a couple bike shops and get new 27 inch tire. I seen them even at Kmart and that other place when forced to go. So if you see a old Schwinn in good condition and at a decent price go ahead and check it out. If you live in my neck of the woods where everyone thinks thier vintage bike or used newer bike is worth so much more then I would ever buy it for, and unless you're seven feet tall good luck finding a bike at a good price. Which brings me to Bikesdirect.com.
I bought a Dawes roadbike from them for 400 bucks and I owned it for a few months now and Im quite pleased with it. They're right about the tires. POS for sure. But I'm still riding on mine and the only thing I replaced is the saddle. (can you guess with what?). And even before the switch it really wasnt bad on bumps for a aluminum frame. For positive sizing contact BD before you order!! Tires will need to be Trued and the rest you can probably put together yourself. It isn't rocket scientist. Might need some cable adjustment. Get a book or watch a few YouTube videos to see how it's done.
But do check out the classic and vintage forum for sure before you decide. Old bikes are the best bikes.

True, by mid 1980s Peugeot had gone to standard sizes and threads - mostly. I bought a 1986 Peugeot that had French thread pedals, I had to tap out the threads to install my pedals. But the 1970s Peugeots will normally have French size stem (bar clamp and stem diameter) and headset, and often French pedal threads and French bottom bracket threading. Not to mention the cottered cranks which are a pain.

I see two issues here, whether that particular bike is a good choice and whether a vintage steel bike can be a good commuter with no special issues. You really need to post that bike in C&V. I'm not an expert on Peugeot's later years but here is what I see.

That bike is a strange mixture of much newer frame and older components. The better approach would be just the reverse, derailleurs upgraded to Suntour (a great period-correct upgrade, still hard to beat), alloy rims, and alloy crank. It looks like someone may have bent the frame of an older Peugeot, founde a new frame, and tried to save money by moving all the older components over to it. If it were my choice I wouldn't go there.

Here is my own UO-8 from a commute a few weeks ago:


Vintage steel has no special requirements. A good frame with the right selection of components and tires can be a great commuter.

Commute is 4.5 miles one way
All road, no off road, no gravel or dirt, there are drain holes, so slight dips in the road which can mostly be avoided to riding around I think
Planning on riding from now and seeing how it goes as it gets colder! I don't mind rain. Mostly likely i will get caught in it at some point
Bike will be left chained in the open. (no bike shed )
I want to do as much as I can work wise myself.

Thanks a bunch everyone!

After reading everyone's help input I am seeing that a vintage bike would not be the best option for me, especially for my first road bike.

27" wheels aren't necessarily bad because if you replace them with 799c, you now have clearance for huge tires and fenders. Replace the brakes with old Mafacs and you are ready to go. Those bikes always had horizontal dropouts so conversion to ss/fixed is easy.

If you are commuting seriously, brifters are a very mixed blessing. They turn very routine crashes and slides from road rash, new bar tape and $40 brake lever into multi hundred dollar events. The DT shifters downplayed above never get trashed in crashes (in 190,000 miles of riding, I have never done it or heard of it) and always work after the crash. Also work with whatever replacement wheel you can stuff in the frame to keep the bike running.

Ben

I think this is what you want. A Giant Perigee, in seemingly nice shape, for $75.

nice 700c giant road bike.

I'm not sure I agree with you. A vintage bike with decent components is not expensive, is easy to maintain, is more or less indestructible. Also 4.5 miles is not a great distance. My commute is 16 miles each way, with about 700ft of climbing each way. I've done it on all my bikes, from super-bikes like the Masi or Motobecane Champion Team to that basic bike-boom Peugeot. I use the Peugeot, the oldest and heaviest, now because it is set up with lights and because I don't mind if it gets dirty and wet. It has served me well for 42 years, and continues to serve.

799c? You mean 700c, right? I can't tpye eihter.

You are absolutely right. 27" wheels are not a problem but could be swapped out for 700c as long as the brakes will reach the extra 4mm. Several of my bikes have 27" wheels, including that Peugeot in the picture.

My main commuting bike is ~20 years old. Not quite "vintage" but steel, heavy, indestructible. I also have a Fuji from the 80s that I will at some point commute on. Right now I am having fun with it being my office bike - I'll ride it the 4 miles from my office to the wife's, or to the bank, expand my lunch options, etc. I love vintage bikes. I also love my carbon bike. I loved my aluminum bike before I sold it. My point is, just be happy with whatever you get, and ride it. The only sucky bikes are bikes that sit at home and never get ridden...doesn't matter if it is a wal mart special or a 10k crabon fibre Di2 hydraulic disc 10 lb bike.

Rode to work today on my '86 Gazelle Champion Mondial. A machine purpose-built for flying over the cobbles.



I pulled the Campy 10 speed group off to build a bike for my son. I just did a quick and dirty FG conversion for fun.

I'm using the winter bike now, but what I've been riding most of the year is an 86ish Univega road bike I got for $75 and later converted to a fixed gear. Before the conversion, you would have had to spend $350 or more to get a better bike from BD.

So it is possible to get a very nice bike from CL for a good price. You have to know what to look for though and be patient. It might take weeks to find a quality road bike in my size that I'd consider a good value. Seems like really huge or really tiny bikes are in good supply.

I can't agree with the above points.

• Getting 27" tires in a wide variety of types is a piece of cake online.
• I haven't tried Campy brakes, but I have Weinmann and MAFAC centerpulls that meet all my expectations.
• I do not find any shortcomings with downtube shifters. YMMV.

This year I brought my 1979 Sekini 10 speed racer back to life. I replaced the drop handlebars to straight handlebars as well as appropriate brake levers. I had been commuting to work with it and even in the rain it's no problem.

I remember when I bought it new, the salesperson said everything was alloy except the rims. Didn't know what that meant until my first ride in the rain. So I replaced the pads with rain brakes. They are still on there and still gripping well in the rain.

It's mostly a minor thing but you have to take a hand off the bars to shift with downtube shifters. From a reliability standpoint they are hard to beat.

In dry conditions I've found that pretty much all rim brakes (except on some department store bikes) work well enough to stop you if they are properly adjusted, the wheels are true and you're used to them. It's not that I think dual pivots aren't better than older style road brakes, but in my mind it's a moderate difference, - not a night and day one.

A few weeks back I thought of using a mountain bike to commute when the winter comes. So I got my son's mountain bike road worthy and took it for a test ride. Boy, did I ever get tired!!! And it's so slow.

The gear ratio of the 15th gear is 48:14. My Sekini 10 speed's 10th gear is 52:14. The extra 1" diameter on the wheels also helps.

So in my opinion a mountain bike is just too slow for commuting. Even if you plan to use mostly park trails, you'll have to come out to join traffic at some point of your trip.

We refer to them as "cheese grater" rims. They "eat" brake shoes faster and only have marginally better braking than steel rims without the serrations. Any Japanese-made road or mountain bike from the 80's or 90's will be a better starter bike for commuting than an older, French threading/metric frame dimensional bike. The later Peugeot models abandoned the odd ball threading and frame tubing sizes for the current standard. Once you have been bitten by the serene beauty of C&V bikes, then delving into the intricacies and esoterics of French bicycles might be a fun hobby, rather than a practical and maintainable bike. As others have said, alloy rims should be a "must have" feature on your commuter. Also, 27" tires are still available, so a better quality older bike that runs these size tires shouldn't be immediately discounted. Happy Hunting and Welcome!

For commuting I'm partial to converted old rigid MTBs...with drop bars. I also like the 80s Japanese touring and sports touring bikes, threading is usually standard, they typically have nice paint, they're well made, they're versatile and have ample tire clearance. Those bikes have been steadily increasing in value, but they're still out there at good prices if patient.

I think older roadies can make great commuters, but it depends on which one.

The engine and tires are big factors here. Your ~89" top gear is much higher than the 71" on my fixed-gear MTB that often sees speeds over 25 MPH.

But then, now that winter conditions have arrived, it behooves us to ride a little slower and more carefully, so I've geared down to 59" and won't see 25 MPH but rarely.

Do you realize that is a cadence of over 118, according to my calculation? That seems pretty extreme. If you are rocking that on the flat in calm conditions then I'm very impressed. But if that's downhill, I guess your feet, and everything attached to them, are mostly along for the ride, as it were.

What are those numbers you call "in. top gear"?

Gear inches = Ring/Cog ratio x tire diameter. A road bike has about 27" tire diameter and with say a 48 front and 16 rear, 27"x48/16=81"

"Gear inches" refers to the effective wheel diameter you would have if your pedals were connected directly to the drive wheel. That's how it was with a high-wheeler - you needed a larger wheel to go faster.

You calculate gear inches by multiplying the wheel diameter times the chainring size, then dividing by the cog size. Or as a formula:
G = d * F / R.

A 52T ring with a 14T cog would be 27 * 52 / 14 = ~100 inches. (A 700c wheel is close enough to 27" for this purpose.)

The ideal gear depends on terrain and riding style, of course. I find I ride mostly in the range of 50"-60". For the most common hills around here it is nice to have a low around 32". I almost never use anything higher than, say, 80".

Usually anything over 25 is with some degree of downhill or a tailwind, but I can still apply power up to ~30 MPH or so. Being able to spin is a useful thing if you're in your highest gear.

The others explained it pretty well, but one nice thing about gear inches is that it removes wheel size from the measurement so you can compare gearing across different bikes. 72" is 72", whether you're on a BMX, an MTB, or a road bike with 27" wheels.

What I meant was that as a first time road bike buyer and user I seems that reading all the input that a vintage bike might not be the most sensible first choice for me. E.g. I had no idea about that information just on that Peugeot bike.

Your right 4.5 miles is not a long commute, although I bet it will feel like it when I start out!