goncalompls

Hello everyone,
Over the weekend I went to a garage sale in Paris and I saw this Peugeot bicycle for sale for 100€ and ended up buying it. I believe it's a 1968 Peugeot PX10 but would like some help to identify the model. It's a bit rusty, front decal it's gone and back decals need some work. Overall I think it's recoverable. I can't find any Reynolds decal on it but I assumed was taken off? It does have a "Inoxydable".

Is this a 1968 PX10? Any way to know if the forks are Reynolds too?
Was this a good purchase?

Thank you!

goncalompls

Hi wrk101 thanks for your reply!
I thought it could be a 1968 by looking at the "Peugeot" lettering and front decal and using my best detective skill (not crazy good have to admit .
Still not fully convinced specially because it's missing the Reynolds decals .Would be great to have some experts help!

Thanks

bikemig 

Chromed rear socks and forged simplex drop outs mean that this bike is a PX 10. That looks like a fun project given how old it likely is. And no Peugeot did not use bottom of the barrel parts on its top end bikes. Agreed that the delrin front derailleurs and some of the delrin shifters are problematic. The rear delrin derailleur tends to last and, unlike a campy, it can handle a wide ranging freewheel. The brakes, hubs, crank, and headset that came as original equipment on PX 10s are all good quality parts.

Mr. 66

I think that will clean up nicely, you are right in there for price, a little high for the lack of clean. The chrome appears good, most of the spots on the frame will disappear with various techniques of removal, the alloy can be polished. I would be most concerned of the stem position, it looks high and the expander could be at the thread.

bargo68 

Just a guess here, but if you aren't into that porteur rack it does look to be vintage and you might recoup the cost of the bike with that piece alone.

trailangel

Does look like 60s PX10. Show a pic of the NDS rear drop-out.
Forks look like Reynolds.. show a pic of the fork crown.
""Still not fully convinced specially because it's missing the Reynolds decals .Would be great to have some experts help!""
We ARE experts here....

goncalompls

To be clear the only non expert I was mentioning before was me. Wasn't for sure in question all the expertise here

I don't have the bicycle with me at the moment but attached some pictures of a similar drop out and fork crown.
Thank you

trailangel

No. Pics of the bike in question please. Does this bike have the finger tab on the NDS rear dropout. I think I see it in your first pic. Helps with date of bike.

xiaoman1 

Many variants of this model, so yes, it is a PX.....fork is correct for PX, is there a riveted tag on the bottom of the BB, what are the numbers?
Here are places to start:
PX-10_History

See decal placement or lack there of
https://www.speedbicycles.ch/velo/266/peugeot_px10_1968.html
Best, Ben
You can also type in PX-10 bike forums and a lot of information will pop up.

PBC peugeot

I LIKE IT !!!!

but I may be biased

bikemig 

Sure if you want to say that the French stuff on top end bikes is not as good as Campy, you're not going to get a lot of argument even though the issue is not quite as open and shut as you suggest but a lot depends on what era of French components you're talking about. To give one example, the Stronglight A9 headset is better than a campy HS. Also I'll take the 122 BCD stronglight crank on the OP's bike over a 144 BCD Campy crank because it gives you better options in tweaking the gearing.

Also that is not what you said in your original post. You said "One of my pet peeves was their use of bottom of the barrel parts even on their upper end bikes." So I'll stand by my response which was "Peugeot did not use bottom of the barrel parts on its top end bikes." Also price matters. French racing bikes were made to a price point and by and large and came in cheaper than top end Italian bikes.

cyclophilia 

Your Peugeot has great potential for restoration: I hope it is your size.

Please take a careful look at the stem quill and the steering tube for possible cracks (stem) or bulges (steerer) - the stem appears to be mounted at an unsafe height.

Nice find!

rustystrings61 

As I look at the pix I see what appears to be a '60s PX-10.

1. The graphics changed c.1970 to have the black and gold stripes flanking "Peugeot" on the downtube. These are the older graphics.
2. The headbadge changed from the shield shape to a more squared-off shape c.1970 AND became a foil decal rather than the metal plate badge seen here
3. The matching tang/finger/extension on the left rear dropout went away fairly early.

If the serial number is on a plate, it's c.1970 or later; before then, the serial numbers were stamped parallel to the line of the BB spindle.

It's a nice bike and I would have paid that all day long. And the rack on the front may well be worth more than what you paid for the whole bike. Were it mine, I would consider quietly locating an alloy Simplex LJ derailleur ensemble and call it done. The Stronglight 93 cranks require a special puller, and they are SOOOO worth the effort. My favorite cranks ever!

eaglerock

Yes, the Stronglight 93 cranks require the Stronglight 23.35mm crank puller. VAR did a compatible puller ("professionnel" model 22/2, "amateur" model 10). If you can't find one locally, the machinist Jim Stein in Arizona (USA) makes excellent reproductions of 23.35mm Stronglight and 23mm Specialites TA extractors, among other marvelous things at steintool(dot)com (bikeforums won't let me post active links yet, as I haven't posted enough - you know what to do).

It looks like the components are mostly original: Stronglight headset*/crank, Simplex Prestige-era derailleurs/shifters, MAFAC centerpull brakes. Simplex's Delrin derailleurs don't get much love (the all-metal SLJ ones weigh a ton), but they're serviceable enough for general riding around purposes. In the US, a typical modification is to thread the hole in the derailleur hanger and file a notch in, so that you can mount a Campagnolo/Japanese derailleur. You can still mount a Simplex derailleur once you've done this, as the Simplex mounting only uses the hole for positioning and pivoting.

One date clue is the brakes, which appear to be MAFAC Dural Forge. Those models were rebranded MAFAC Racer in 1969, although the two variants are identical in all non-cosmetic respects. Assuming that the brakes are original (as I do), that puts the bike in the 1964 (from the decals)-1968 (brakes) time window.

The Nervex Pro lugs disappeared from the PX10 (and the PA10, a race model aimed at amateurs with cottered cranks) around 1970, to be replaced with simpler Bocama lugs, similar to the increasingly fashionable Italian bikes of the era.

As for the missing Reynolds decals: Waterslide decals are fragile. The bike is 50+ years old; it's obviously been worked hard, as is obvious both from the rust and the porteur rack. The Reynolds decals could well have flaked off - no deliberate removal required. I'd be surprised if they hadn't flaked off decades ago. I live near San Francisco, where it never snows and nobody salts the roads, and I've never seen a bike of that age around here with original finish and pristine decals. If somebody has undamaged decals, it's almost always because they've repainted and redecaled it.

You might look for traces of adhesion or different-colored paint in the usual locations (rectangular seat tube decal in top half of tube; triangular fork decals just below crown). When I'm trying to restore an old frame, I'm very cautious about aggressive cleaning until I've documented the size, shape and location of any unfaded paint patches or adhesive outlines; they're clues as to the decals that used to be there.

- Peter In shockingly sunny Berkeley, California

* As bikemig says, top-tier Stronglight components are often equal to Campagnolo. Several years ago, I was swapping Stronglight components out on an early 1970 Follis, to upgrade it from a 472 model to a a 572. I came to my senses before pulling out the cups of the excellent Stronglight V4 Competition headset, which in my opinion is superior to the Campagnolo Nuovo Record I'd planned to replace it with

eaglerock

There are several Stronglight variants that give you more flexible options that 144 BCD Campagnolo Record...as long as you have sources for compatible chainrings. Stronglight 93 used a 5-arm, 122 BCD chainring; inner rings from the 5-pin 50.4 BCD Stronglight 49 are also 122. Nervar (a competing French crank/chainring company) had their own 128 BCD chainring pattern; they switched to Stronglight's 122 BCD around 1980, at the same time Stronglight saw the writing on the wall and switched to Shimano's 130 BCD and Campagnolo's 144 BCD.

Another Stronglight pattern that's often more practical is the 5-arm 86 BCD Stronglight 99, which comes in an earlier variant that uses the traditional 23.35mm extractor, and a later one that uses a Campagnolo/Japanese "modern" 22mm extractor. The Stronglight is capable of handling granny rings down to 28T; all three rings clamp to the spider with a single set of bolts, unlike most road cranks of the era which used one BCD/attachment for the middle/outer rings of a triple, and a second BCD for the granny ring. Cranks and chainrings for 86 BCD were also made by the Japanese company SR (Sakae Ringyo), so there a lot of them around, comparatively speaking.

My own preferred not-Shimano chainring pattern is 50.4, especially in its interpretation by Specialites TA. In a 5-pin 50.4 BCD chainset (that's the correct British term for cranks+chainrings, right? I can never keep the terminology straight), the outer chainring acts as the spider, with the inner rings bolted to a second set of holes in the outer chainring. The pattern dates back to the 1920s; it was long available in cottered form, and was first released in cotterless by Stronglight in the 1930s, in the model that was eventually sold as Stronglight 49.

TA made chainrings for 50.4 cranks for fifteen years before they made their first crankarms in 1962. A fairly typical set for racers in the 1950s was Stronglight 49 cotterless crankarms with a TA adapter and TA chainrings attached; TA had their 6-arm chainrings available in every toothcount from 26T to 64T in regular stock, and there are photos of hour-record bikes with 100T rings. The use of an adapter to extend the 50.4 BCD crank attachment to 116 BCD "randonneur" or 152 BCD "professionnel" dimensions made it easy to remove the chainrings without extracting the cranks from the bottom bracket. In track racing, where there were lots of tricky mind games by the racers/pit crews to deceive other riders as to the gear one would use, the ability to quickly change gearing by swapping the chainring/wheel is supposed to have provided a certain psychological advantage.

I have a huge investment in 50.4 TA rings, ranging from 26T to 54T. Most of my currently functional bikes have 50.4 cranks installed, including two French racers (1952 and 1962 Follis - the older one cottered), one British "racer" (I suppose; 1973 gold-plated Lambert Professional Grand Prix) and one American tourer (1984 Trek 720). The utility of 50.4 is demonstrated by the continuing niche interest in the format, especially among bike tourers; that's why TA does another run of crankarms every few years, and Asian manufacturers such as SunXCD (the revived Suntour), Electra and Velo Orange keep them in the product line.

Peter in Berkeley, California
50.4 or fight!

eaglerock

Quickie answers in order:

"Inoxydable" = stainless; to which I say HAW-haw, Nelson Muntz-style. Peugeot used this decal on practically every steel bike they made in the 60s and 70s, which didn't prevent them from rusting just like any other steel bike when there was prolonged contact with moisture. If Peugeot did anything special as a rust preventative, I'd like to hear about it.

Reynolds 531, the preferred steel for high-end French framemakers for 40+ years, is not a stainless steel; it's a carbon steel alloyed with manganese and molybdenum, just as the more common cro-moly steel used by other premier tubing manufacturers (Columbus, Vitus/Atelier de la Rive, Accles & Pollock) is a carbon steel alloyed with chromium and molybdenum. Stainless steel bike frames exist, but the techniques and tooling required for brazing the frames are quite different from carbon steels. To the best of my knowledge, no manufacturer of Peugeot's size ever made stainless steel frames in arge numbers.

"Is this a 1968 PX10?" = collective hunch says yes, or possibly in the few years before. The decals are 1965 and later, there's a headtube decal instead of a badge, it has Nervex Pro lugs and (maybe?) a Nervex Pro crown (as trailangel says, we need to see a clear picture of the crown from the side and front - all your photos have the rack blocking it), it has the right paint scheme, it has chrome socks front and rear.

"Any way to know if the forks are Reynolds too?" = maybe, depending on how the fork blades were made. When you're able to take the bike apart (which you should, for cleaning/de-rusting/relubricating purposes), I would remove the porteur rack from the fork and the fork from the headset. Reynolds 531 steerers often have "REYNOLDS 531" stamped on them; it's unlikely that you'd have a 531 steerer without 531 blades. Reynolds also often stamped frame tubes and fork blades, usually in the unbutted areas near the fork crown and the bottom bracket. Whether those stamps are present depends on where the tubing was cut when the frame was assembled; if the frame is on the smaller side, the point where the stamp was may have been cut off to fit.

When the fork is off the frame, I would carefully examine the tops of both fork blades, both with your eyes and your fingertips. Since this is still the original paint, the stamp may still be visible, as it doesn't have additional coats of paint filling it in.

In any case, the presence/absence of a particular frame or fork tubing decal is no guarantee of the actual tubing, without supporting evidence. Decals for Reynolds 531 are readily available, in many variants in both English and French; bad actors slapping an aftermarket decal onto a bike in order to increase its perceived value (and therefore the sales price) is unfortunately a long-standing practice.

That said, different companies had different decalling practices - sometimes different decalling processes in different years, or on different models, or on different days, or with different guys in the paint shop, or any combination of those variables. For example: The Raleigh International (an all 531-DB frame/fork in the 70s) sometimes got triangular Reynolds 531 fork decals, and sometimes got the Carlton ribbons (to reflect that they wore made in the Carlton works, instead of the main Raleigh factory). In some cases, it may have depended on what came out of the decal box when the guy in the finishing department reached his hand into it.

I wouldn't worry about it much. Odds are, the fork blades are 531 just as the frame tubes are, for whatever difference it makes. The key question is: Do you like the way your Peugeot rides?

A lot of very expensive custom builders in the US often won't tell you which tubing they're using (and get annoyed if you ask). Their point is: You hired a professional to make you a bike that rides the way you want. You hired the professional based on that professional's experience. You should trust the professional's judgement as to what materials to use to produce your desired result; s/he knows this stuff better than you do. To that end, a lot of those custom builders mix tubes from different manufacturers, to produce a bike that performs as the rider requires, and use no tubing labels at all. If you buy a bike from a builder like Richard Sachs or Ed Litton or J.P. Weigle, the builder's name is a much better sign of the bike's quality than a tubing decal.

"Is this a good purchase?" = if the ride is decent, if there's no serious rust damage (check the bottom bracket shell), you didn't pay too much for the ticket to Paris and you choose to sell the porteur rack on as rustystrings suggests, I'd say you got a score. Here in the US, even mediocre PX-10s often get $300-400 (about £ 225-300 at today's exchange rate).

xiaoman1 

PX-10LE
Best, Ben

goncalompls

Thank you so much for all the answers is amazing the amount of knowledge and expertise in this blog very much appreciated all the help.

I will be picking up the bike from a friend’s garage soon and start working on it and I’m thinking of creating a post here with the progress.

Does anyone have any sort of list of components from this model and year? I need to get a new handlebar for it.

Also always the question I debate with repaint the whole bike and get new decals or keep it and leave some potential rust marks(after a clean up ofc ) ?

verktyg 

1968 Peugeot PX-10 E Specs


Skipping all the guesses, below are photos of my all original 54cm 1967 PX-10 "barn bike" that I picked up back in 2007. There wasn't much difference between the 1967 and 68 models. Mine came with 2 sets of wheels, 27" clinchers and sewups and had at least 25 years of dirt and grime on it. I vacuumed much of it off before I started doing any clean up.

For rideability I changed the bars, stem and tape, pedals, toe clips and straps, cables and housing, half brake lever hoods, brake blocks plus tires. Later I also replaced the Simplex FD because the old Delrin gave up the ghost after about 50 years.

How it looked after I brought it home vacuumed it.




Foil head tube sticker.



Stronglight 93 NDS crank with Lyotard 45CA pedals.



Note the "Horn" on the NDS dropout. It actually helps guiding the rear wheel in. The inner pulley cage on the Simplex Criterium RD is stamped 8 72 (August 1972) indicating it was replaced at some point during the bike boom.





I cleaned it up and rode it for awhile. The same week that I got the 1967 PX-10 I found a 1969 Gitane Tour de France barn bike in the same condition. I overhauled the Gitane and did a partial restoration but I never did get past cleaning and getting the PX-10 rideable.



We sold Gitanes during the bike boom, Peugeot was the competition. Even though the TdFs were comparably equipped to the PX-10s and had about the same geometry I always liked the ride and handling of the Gitanes better. Having these two bikes I was able to do a subjective comparison. Set up just about identically, I still found the Gitane to be smoother riding, especially on the front end.

Reynolds produced 531 forks with at least 2 different wall thicknesses: 1.22mm/0.81mm and 1.42mm/0.91mm. I suspect that Peugeot used the heavier fork blades on the PX-10s???

Both bikes sat fallow in my garage for over 10 years. Last year I decided to move both bikes on. I cleaned and adjusted the PX-10 and had it out several times. I forgot how sweet a riding bike it is!



I'm going to post this in the C&V For Sale Forum but I'd entertain any offers.

verktyg "50"

jdawginsc 

Two cents from the peanut gallery...

You won with the crankset, front rack, fenders and the frame. Think of everything else as expendable or tradable...

If the BB and headset are in decent shape, even better.

Looks like a great project.

goncalompls

Hello again everybody! I finally managed to pick up this project and would like some advice from you if possible

I started to give a good clean on the bike, unmounted all the components and started to get to some of the rust in the frame. Some of the components had a lot of rust and that passed to the frame and some scratches took out a good part of the paint on the frame.
This is the state of it so far:








Now I’m debating about getting a fresh paint on it or keep as is. Any advice you can give me to help make the decision?

Another thing that I would like help with is I got this Campagnolo Nuevo Record set of front and rear gears from a friend. I was trying to fit the rear gears but doesn’t fit on the frame. Any advice how’s the fit this? Making the whole larger will impact the value of the bike?



Thank you very much!

3alarmer 

.
...you can't fit a Campagnolo NR rear derailleur to that simplex dropout without both modifying the hole, and more importantly fabricating some sort of stop for the derailleur positioning. There are a lot of threads here on Bikeforums on how to do that. My own preference is to just find an older Shimano Crane rear derailleur (which doesn't need a stop), and mount it by threading the hole, or using a Simplex rear derailleur, which bolts right in.

3alarmer 

PX-10 Information Thread.

wrk101

My other comments now gone there were some french brands that used better parts across their product line. My one example was Motobecane. At the lower to mid levels, you would find Suntour Vx or first generation Suntour Cyclone derailleurs and shift levers. I would call those a sizable improvement over the plastic Simplex derailleurs and they would have the standard RD mounting design. At the upper end, they tended to use Campy parts. I do not know the pricing back in the day, but I would expect Motobecane to have enjoyed a pricing advantage over the typical Italian brands.


You would also find Stronglight HS, and Stronglight or TA cranksets on the mid level Motobecanes. All in all, I am a pretty big fan of the Motobecane bikes. I've also been pleasantly surprised by the use of relatively good parts on lower end Motobecanes in the mid 1970s.

Full disclosure, back in the day (1975), I bought a Peugeot, and not a Motobecane. Didn't know the difference then.

goncalompls

Thanks for all this. I've been reading about it and saw some people mount a Wolftooth adapter or a hanger that works with Campagnolo NR. Would this be something you suggest? I was really keen to get the spare set of Campagnolo NR I have into my PX10 but without harming the frame.

Another help I would like is for the stem and bars. I know the original stem is a must replace but I'm trying to find out what shall I replace it with for the year of my bike which I believe is 1969. Some people in other threads mention Pivo stem and bar, does anyone have pictures of the set? or any other suggestions with pictures please?

Thank you