White arrow - vintage road bike project

A colleague asked me to find her a road bicycle for up to around 200 euros. Since small sized frame 2nd hand bikes offer was very poor, it was decided to find a frame and components and assemble a nice fast bike. 🙂

1. Sourcing parts and preparations

Suitable frame was found. Old Peugeot road frame with chromium-molybdenum Columbus tubing.

Frame for the project — First things first: frame for the project

Next came the groupset. Shimano 600 brakes and brake levers, with SunTour derailleurs and shifters. Crankset was Shimano BioPace 53-42. It all needed some cleaning and lubing.

Shimano BioPace chainrings — SunTour front derailleur

After some cleaning, this is what it looks like:

2. Restoring hubs and wheels

Inside of the rim before cleaning — Rear hub before the overhaul

Coarse sand paper 220 grade, for repairing rim brake surface damage. Later, finer sand paper of grade 600 was used — Rim braking surface damage

Rim and spokes were cleaned and nipples lubed with “light” oil to help truing the wheel.

Cleaned rims and spokes and lubed spoke nipples

Next came hub overhaul. Instructions how to do it are given in this post: Bicycle hub overhaul.

Removing cassette lockring — Last sprocket is screwed onto the freehub, locking the cassette in place. Picture 2b

Shimano tidiness: each spacer and sprocket order is marked — Last sprocket is screwed onto the freehub, locking the cassette in place. Picture 2b

Freehub body removed – to clean and lubricate

Freehub seat coated with copper grease to prevent seizing — Freehub body removed – to clean and lubricate

Copper grease coated axle lockring - to prevent it from siezing — Placing new bearing balls

Cleaning the hollow axle — Dirt inside the hollow axle

Finally, it was all assembled together and wheels were trued.

3. Crankset assembly

Crankset is Shimano BioPace. It has asymmetric, i.e. not completely round chainrings. The idea is that the diameter is increased near the top and bottom of each stroke (when pedals are at 12 and 6 o’clock). This slightly slows down the transition from upward to downward leg movement (and vice-versa). When cranks are near 3 and 9 o’clock, chainring diameter is effectively smaller, enabling easier and faster movement. This design is easier on the knees when pedalling with more force at a low cadence, and reduces the “bouncing in the saddle” effect when using high cadences.

Most asymmetrical chainrings of other manufacturers use opposite curves – making chainrings with largest diameter at 3 and 9 o’clock pedal position. Like this Rotor’s Q RINGS® chainring design. The idea is to give most resistance in position where a rider can produce most torque, while making it easier in 12 and 6 o’clock position. This design is very bad for the knees, because, when transition from upward to downward movement happens (at top and bottom of each stroke), it lowers resistance, effectively further increasing the turning speed. Effectively – knees and muscles need to transfer from going upwards (and “pulling”) to going downwards (and “pushing”) even faster, than with using round chainrings.

This is why, when mounting BioPace chainrings, proper orientation is very important:

Shimano BioPace large chainring orientation mark

Shimano BioPace small chainring orientation mark — Shimano BioPace large chainring orientation mark

Key for tightening chainrings onto the crankset spider.

Key is used to hold the nut in place, while on the other side a 5 mm allen wrench is used for tightening — Key for tightening chainrings onto the crankset spider.

4. Rear derailleur service

Rear derailleur was completely disassembled, cleaned and re-lubricated:

5. Frame restauration

Frame needed sand blasting, then painting, then preparation for all the parts to be mounted onto it.

Sand blasted frame - bare metal — Sand blasted frame – bare metal

Difference in colour: shows where tubes are welded (practically glued) together with melted brass — Sand blasted frame – bare metal

Then the frame was sent to be powder coated.

Check of dropout (and frame) alignment upon the return from powder coating — Powder coated fork

Frame measurement and re-alignment should be done before painting, this was just a final check before assembling it. Had there been any damage during transport, it would have shown in this final measurement.

Before mounting parts, all the frame mounting threads needed to be cleaned: