The patient has arrived

Exciting times in the summer singlespeed project as the source bike is identified and brought home. An all-points plea at work brought lots of feedback from the bike boys and one back garden with three surplus machines in need of help.

A quick check gave me comfort with the basics, 23 inch frame with nearly horizontal hangers. That means its reasonably big and the chain can be tensioned by moving the wheel backwards rather than use one of those silly looking roller wheels which cut so much against the whole minimalist thing. Looked a bit scruffy in the photos but should be OK.

Picked it up from Camberley today and brought it home. The trip had the unexpected challenge of riding it the last mile – car not big enough for garden table and bike in one go so something had to give, and that was me and the bike. Jane took the car and disappeared into the sunset whilst I worked out what did and didn’t work on the bike.

Minimal air in tyres but enough to roll, no back brake, front brake ok but loose forks that moved under braking, fortunately in a usable gear so didn’t even try the shifters and the seat was way down low. Let’s just say it could have been a whole lot worse and gave a good feeling for the starting point, and it was actually quite effective for the mile I rode it, uphill and passing a chap on a much newer and better fitted hybrid – this could be fun.

Source bike - the dayglo Peugeot

So what is the source bike? It turns out to be an 18 speed hardtail mountain bike by Peugeot. Model is a Raider and it probably dates from the late 80s or early 90s given the paint job – once dayglo pinky orange with all kinds of fluorescent flashes, but all now faded (thankfully). Wheels are 26 inch which is not ideal but as a first conversion I’ll live with that. All in, it should do the job. All I have to do now is start to strip it down, select the new components and most important of all, the new colour scheme.

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