A Bicycle for a Lady

I've been trying to persuade Miss Bicycles to start riding for a while now, although she has always insisted I will have to supply the bike. Last week I spotted something interesting on ebay, an old Peugeot mixte

What interested me most was that the photos were poor quality and the bike looked pretty rough so I guessed the bidding would be low, but there seemed to be nothing fundamentally wrong with it.

My guess turned out to be correct and I won it for £34, the next day and a £10 train journey later and I had it home...

The stem was seized at a funny angle, that was a bit of a bugger, as it was an odd 7mm allen key, which I didn't have amongst my tools but I found one in the workshop at work and set it right.

The chain had seen better days and the clearcoat was flaking

All the alloy is quite tarnished

Mudguards very tarnished

The rear wheel was tarnished, once I got the tyre off it saw that it had rotted through and had to be replaced

Leaves and cobwebs, the bike had spent some time in a barn.

Bars were tarnished and I never think drop bars suit a mixte.

Some heavy pitting on the chrome, that isn't all going to come out

Rather more money than I had hoped and several hours of elbow grease later and she is looking quite fine

I replaced, handlebars, brake levers, grips, cables and housings, chain, tyre and tubes, rear wheel and saddle and added a bell.

All the alloy was cleaned by scrubbing with aluminium kitchen foil and water.

A lot of it came up very shiny

I went for some nice swept handlebars and gumwall Schwalbe Delta Cruisers which I have on my Gazelle and have been very reliable.

I handed it over last night, first impressions were good, we'll take it out over the weekend and see how it rides.