80s meets 90s Peugeot PH501 "Hybrid"

[veganhaggis]

I spotted this 1985 Peugeot PH501 for sale locally for £30.

The listing described it as 'Very old road bike, works fine'.

Between the non-functioning brakes, the horribly out of true back wheel (probably contributing to the former) and the severely indexed steering there wasn't much on the bike that was working fine. Worryingly the previous owner had been commuting on it too. However I was looking for a project and happily parted with my £30. The bag of cleaning products and the fairly fresh tyres that came with the bike was consolation that it wouldn't be entirely wasted.

Here's some photos of the bike the day I picked it up.







Plenty of patina!


I fully stripped the bike and built it back up, trying my best to spend as little as I could (at least initially...) rebuilding the original headset & bottom bracket.

The original back wheel was unsalvageable, not least because the bearings were sitting open to the elements, so a new set of wheels from a bargain seller on eBay was purchased.

I kept the Shimano Titlist RD, and the limit screws on the original front derailleur were so worn it was simplest to replace the whole thing with a matching Shimano one.

After some time trying to get decent performance out of the original brakes I decided a modern replacement was a worthwhile investment. I picked up a pair of Tektro R539 calipers, one of which I promptly destroyed trying to fit a Jtek bolt so I wouldn't have to drill the forks. I bought another set and just drilled the forks, using the leftover front caliper from the first set on the rear. Lesson learned!

I also discovered that the frame will take 32mm tyres, although you need to inflate the rear one after putting the wheel into the dropouts!

I finally got the bike back together and gave it a proper test ride on my commute which I usually do on my Langster single speed.



First impressions were not great. The short stem and long reach to the hoods made the steering feel extremely twitchy. Coupled with having to reach down to shift it felt both unstable, unpredictable and sluggish compared to my usual ride.

I continued to commute on my single speed whilst I considered my options.

Unwilling to give up on the Pug completely I decided to try it out as a 90s MTB inspired hybrid. I found a longer stem and some scuffed Marin Lite MTB flat bars in the parts bin at my local community bike workshop, and bought some nice parts online to finish it off (having given up completely on the idea of this being a budget build).

These are the results. Definitely in need of a deep clean at some point, but I'm happy to embrace the mix of shiny and not so shiny parts. Not one for the purists but it's great fun to ride around town!

 

[sjcprojects]

This is kind of a moot point now, but it looks like when you fitted the drop bar levers they were fitted pretty low down on the bars, making the reach awkward. It can be tricky because modern drop bars have bends with flatter tops which allow for the lever tops to align with the bar tops, but with traditional drop bars you can't really do that, so they need to be positioned a bit differently. I only mention this because I wouldn't want someone to be put entirely off the idea of drop bars in the future.

Also, budget builds rarely end up being that way, somehow!

Anyway, those Pugs do clean up nicely. I've always thought they were nice looking bikes, from the top-end ones down to the cheaper models, they have a classic look to them.

 

[veganhaggis]

This is kind of a moot point now, but it looks like when you fitted the drop bar levers they were fitted pretty low down on the bars, making the reach awkward. It can be tricky because modern drop bars have bends with flatter tops which allow for the lever tops to align with the bar tops, but with traditional drop bars you can't really do that, so they need to be positioned a bit differently. I only mention this because I wouldn't want someone to be put entirely off the idea of drop bars in the future.

A very fair observation and definitely something that had occurred to me (only after I'd wrapped the bars annoyingly!)

This is actually the first time in ages I've opted for flat bars over drops on a bike. I'm sure with right drop setup it'd be fantastic but it was a chance for me to try something different

For my current purposes it was as much to move the shifters onto the bars as anything else so I wouldn't have to reach down whilst negotiating traffic, potholes or pulling away at junctions on my commute.

If I could start over I'd have bought the 'expensive' £50 Microshift road groupset I briefly considered when I first got the bike... I've definitely spent more than that trying to save money