An old friend of mine picked up a 1959 Schwinn Tiger three speed at a yard sale for a $25.  He decided to share his good fortune and donate the well-preserved beauty to the Iowa City Bike Library.  Wherever this thing was kept, the humidity was low and the UV exposure was minimal.  In fact, we opened the battery powered headlamp and found a couple of incredibly well preserved Eveready “D” cell batteries.  The price (20 cents) is on the battery.   There is also a guarantee printed on the battery that says Everready will replace your flashlight if it is damaged by leakage.  It gives an address where you should mail your damaged flashlight.  A simpler time, for sure.

Speaking of bike lighting, I had the Peugeot Nouveau Style out yesterday and tested the bottle dynamo.  I’ve always been a fan of the lighting systems on vintage French bicycles.   The French took painstaking measures to conceal unsightly wiring inside frame tubes and along the crimped edges of fenders.  This was a tidy aesthetic that never caught on with the British.  The Brits were not troubled by dangling wiring.  I prefer the clean look.  Today, with hub dynamos, LEDs and capacitors, I’m thinking bike manufacturers ought to set up city bikes and commuters with internally wired, fender mounted lighting systems.

Winter is project time.  Earlier this week, we had a blizzard going on here in Iowa City.  I took the opportunity to finish working on one of the three winter bike projects I’ve got going on. 

I’m in the process of finishing up a Peugeot NSL-40.  The “NS” stands for Nouveau Style and the “L” signifies Luxury.   It’s a five speed, and this frame style also came as a single speed folder,.  The wheels were very rough and, unfortunately, an obsolete size 550A (490 mm ISO/BSD).  Thankfully, it was an easy fix by  substituting small MTB rims (24” or 507 mm ISO).   It also has internal cabling and dynamo wiring with    Franco-rific fender-mount lights. 

This was a pretty straightforward clean and tune project.  However, in addition to the wheels I did swap out a couple of components.  For instance, I replaced the cottered crank with a 3-pin alloy Stronglight TS.   Next, I changed the tattered Simplex Prestige with another very clean white label Prestige from my French derailleur box.  What’s more, I had already done a preemptive Suntour pulley wheel transplant on this derailleur.   There were several other very nice Simplexes in the box, but I chose to keep my powder dry a least until I see how this thing performs. 

The Simplex Prestige transmission system is much maligned.  I will concede the integrity is horrible.  But the rear derailleur actually performs well before the pieces start cracking and crumbling.  Simplex rear derailleurs had the upper pivot return spring on everything from the Prestige to the SLJ models.  This feature gave them superior shifting by wrapping chain and keeping pulley wheels tight and close to the freewheel/cassette.  I did, however, replace the fragile Simplex Prestige shifter with a smooth and sturdy Simplex Criterium lever.    

After fishing the cable housing through the frame, I grabbed a shift cable and started to install it.  Then I remembered these old Simplex shifters take a cable end that is significantly smaller than contemporary shifter cables.  I was about to file down the cable end when I remembered I had a stash of cables I purchased from a shop back in the late 80s.  They were clearing out stock and I bought all they had – about a dozen or so.  I came across them recently while cleaning up.  On one end of the cable is the smaller barrel end and the other is the smaller disc shaped end that fits Huret shifters.  These are getting harder to find.

As I previously mentioned, the dynamo wiring is run inside the frame and tucked neatly into crimped edges of the fenders.  For those familiar with French bicycles, this was pretty common on city style bikes of a certain vintage.  It gives bikes a nice finished look.  No stay wire hanging about.

Next up… the Moulton!