jdawginsc 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/velo-course....c100047.m2108

Sort of my size, too...



Italianesque geometry

Thron tubes...hmm. The mystery thickens

Umm...what is the RSX derailleur doing there? And how the heck does it work with Ergos...?

Ugly bar wrappage, but Mavic rims, and Miche headset

Vetta and Campy combo chair...

Not sure what bars (look like Giros) and stem, but the somewhat elusive and very reliable Avanti brifters!

jdawginsc 

For the record, my first bike was a Peugeot U810FXhsjdhgkjdgskjhr310 (can't remember), but I am really not a fan.

...but if this was half the shipping, I'd have a tough time passing it by...it's sort of quirky cool.

randyjawa 

What suggests that the OP's Peugeot is Italian? The head tube sticker says "Made in France". ???

cudak888 

Perhaps he meant an Italian-tubeset Peugeot, given that it's Columbus.

-Kurt

jdawginsc 

correct!

Germany_chris

I looked at a Thron tubed Peugeot a couple nights back

JohnDThompson 

And Italian components. By the time this bike was made, the French bicycle component industry was pretty much moribund.

jdawginsc 

It's just a really odd conglomeration for a Peugeot. I like it, and wish it was closer and I would be tempted to jump.

cudak888 

One has to admit, it takes a few minutes to wrap one's head around the idea of a Columbus tubed Peugeot with internal lugs - plus the Campag components.

This had to have been a home-market model, right? I see references to Competition 1000 and 2000's in the 1996 catalog, but there's a gap in catalog references between 1992 and '96 that this probably falls in.

-Kurt

T-Mar

It's not internally lugged but internally brazed, like those early 1980s Carbolite models. It probably is European market, as Procycle was building the mid-range North American market road models with True Temper in the mid-1990s. However, Columbus wasn't new to Peugeot or even the North American market models. Columbus was used as early as 1986, with an SLX tubeset on the USA market PX. If the presence use of a Columbus tubeset makes it Italian, then I guess all those boom era PX10 and PR10 were English, by virtue of their Reynolds tubesets.

cudak888 

No matter how many times I read up on this, I always get it wrong. Thanks for the correction.

I don't think the OP meant to imply this - it's just a case of how unusual it is, from a North American perspective, to see a Peugeot like this. The general variety of Peugeots that show up here almost hard-wire us to expect a metric 531 sticker on a boom-era PX10, Peugeot's in-house lugs on a UO8, or something two-tone wearing a Carbolite 103 decal. Heck, the variety is so limited that to hear of a UE8 popping up seems to cause raised eyebrows in the US.

-Kurt

styggno1

I have nothing on the bike itself - just want to let you know - that is not a Campagnolo seatpost.

jackbombay

How is this accomplished? Is it fillet brazed inside of the tube? I have so many questions!

verktyg 

Preformed shapes of alloy brazing material are placed inside and outside the tubes then furnace or hearth brazed.




In the early 80's Peugeot, Motobecane and Gitane started making frames for their lower priced bikes that way. The marketoid BS claim was that it was better than a lugged frame. The real reason was to cut costs to compete against the deluge of cheap Asian hitting the European market.

It wasn't a new process. For many years metal furniture made of tubing and lots of other products were made with brazing preforms. Even some cheap department store bikes were made that way.

I've never seen any frame failures on those internally brazed French made bikes.... But I'm a belt and suspenders (braces) kinda guy... I like lugs.

Getting back to Italian equipped Peugeots, I have 3:

A 1988 Peugeot Chorus with a Reynolds 753 frame and a 1st generation Campy Chorus gruppo, a 1989 Peugeot Chorus 753 with the same tubing and components and a 1989 Peugeot SLX. The SLX was a former team bike from the UK with a mixed Campy gruppo and a Columbus SLX frame.



Work in progress...







During the mid to late 80's Peugeot made a number of models with various grades of Columbus tubing (Aelle, Chromor. etc) plus Campy Victory gruppos. Most were made for sale in markets other than the US.

verktyg

T-Mar

Internal brazing had one other significant advantage over lugs, in that it allowed visual inspection of the quality of the joint. With lugs, the joint is hidden underneath the lug. It's impossible to determine the penetration without very sophisticated, expensive and time consuming equipment. With the lugless brazing systems, the larger fillet is on the inside of the tube but the amount and characteristics of the reflow on the outside of the tube allowed inspectors to gauge the quality of the internal fillet.


This allowed Peugeot to catch the vast majority of defective frames before they left the factory and before Peugeot invested the time and money in painting and assembly of the bicycle. It saved them a lot of money not just manufacturing but in warranty claims. This ability to visually inspect the quality of the joint is a big factor in why you've never seen any failures.

John E

Interesting point. Is this also an argument in favor of lug cutouts, to enhance the odds of properly flowing the brazing material into the tube-lug joint?

jdawginsc 

Not implying that it's Italian. I just didn't recall Peugeot journeying from Reynolds/Vitus to Columbus...granted, my experience in European models was non-existent until recently...And Peugeots always used Campy on the top line non-market models...I used to dream of a PY10 that had been outfitted with Super Record in a pearl white...it didn't match the catalog. It was right next to a Lotus Supreme, pearl-ized pink also with Campy.

I just thought it sort of unique.

verktyg 

Several more Peugeot models with Columbus SLX frames and Campagnolo Athena gruppos.

Dolomites model from the 1989 French catalog



Athena model from the 1989 US Catalog. Same bike as the Dolomites, just different color and model name. Peugeot did that a lot for different markets.



CX 700 Vanoise model from the 1990 German catalog



As I mentioned above, in the mid 80's Peugeot produced a number of models for the European markets with Reynolds 531 or Super Vitus 980 frames and Campagnolo Victory gruppos.

verktyg :50

jdawginsc 

Interesting. I was obviously way out of the Peugeot loop!

jackbombay

Interesting.

I can't say I like this as much as fillet brazing or lugs, I imagine that its strong enough, but having the connection on the inside of the tube does make the tube have more leverage over the brass that it would if the brass was outside the tube.

Thanks for the info!

verktyg 

Here's Motobecane's version, they called it "INEXTERNAL BRAZING". Note: the amount of fillet shown on the outside of the INEXTERNAL joint is an exaggeration...



This is a cutaway of a Peugeot head tube showing the internal and external fillets.



T-Mar makes a good point that I hadn't considered in his post above. The process makes it easy to inspect the brazed joints.

John E cutouts in lugs do make it easier to see where the molten brazing material is going and to aid in penetration. It can be hard to see what's going on with the brightness of the flame and and the hot tubes especially when there is a lot of molten flux in the area..



Excess flux can prevent filling of gaps at the "shoreline" of lugs. When the cooled hardened flux is removed gaps can appear.



One solution is to use an Inline Gas Fluxer which mixes the flux with the oxygen and acetylene before it reaches the flame. This leaves much less flux to clean up and gives a better view of what's happening at the joint.

verktyg

T-Mar

Here's a video of bicycle manufacture at the Procycle facility in Canada. While the bicycles shown being manufactured in the video are CCM (which Procycle had acquired in 1983), the brazing process, shown briefly starting at about at 0:47, is the exact same process used in the manufacture of Peugeot lugless frames.

Procycle had been manufacturing entry level, Canadian market, Peugeot since 1978 and in 1988 started lugless manufacture using Peugeot's technology, know as DBS (Direct Brazing System) in Canada and PBS (Peugeot Brazing System) in France. At the end of 1990, when Peugeot USA abandoned the USA market, Procycle stepped in and provided Peugeot for both the Canadian and USA markets until expiration of their licence agreement in 2001.

T-Mar

Lug windows have a couple of advantages over windowless lugs, besides aesthetics and weight consideration. Since the lug area is reduced, typically in the central area, they do not require as much capillary draw of the brazing material. They also provide evidence of the amount of penetration beyond the outside edges, though the flow into the critical mitre area is still indeterminate.

On the down side, lug windows reduce the surface area of the joint between the lug and tube. Consequently, it's not as strong. This is a concern, particularly with non-mitred tubes, which reduces the available contact area even more. As a result, lugs used with non-mitred tubes are usually windowless or have very small windows. To maximize joint area, windowed lugs should always used mitred tubes and for maximum joint strength it's critical to get the flow to fill the mitre area.

himespau 

Cool bike and interesting discussion.

T-Mar

Up to and during the early 1970s bicycle boom, Reynolds was generally regarded as the best bicycle tubing and Columbus was typically relegated to Italian marques. However, in the post boom decade there was shift towards Columbus. I won't get into the reasons here, as there's a lengthy discussion in another thread on the C&V forum. The first of the major French brands to switch was Motobecane, circa 1977-1978 with their Team Champion. Gitane and Mercier both started offering Columbus models in the early 1980s. By comparison, Peugeot was late to the party. In the USA, both Ross and Schwnn had Columbus tubed models by 1982 and even some the USA marketing brands, such as Lotus and Nishiki, which traditionally used Japanese tubesets, were cataloging models with Columbus tubesets by the mid-1980s.