FedEx Believe It Or Not

I bought this mid-60's Peugeot UO-8 frame off of ebay, last week, to build up a fixie for a customer. It arrived on Friday, packed just as you see it here; no box, no padding, not even a brace between the rear dropouts or the fork legs. The pedals were still in the cranks, and the brakes were wrapped in plastic and sitting inside the main triangle of the frame.

It seems almost unbelievable that someone would take a "package" like this to FedEx, in the first place. It's even more unbelievable that FedEx would accept it for shipment!

Incredibly, it arrived undamaged. I threw some random parts on it so that my customer could test ride it (it fit fine and she's buying it), and it rides great.

So, now it goes off for bead blasting and red powdercoat. New decals are on the way, and it will get built with its final parts when it gets back.

I will be using the bottom bracket that's in it, though. I found a spindle and bearings which work with the cups from the original French bottom bracket, allowing me to use a non-cottered alloy crank in place of the steel boat anchor with which it came.

I'll also be sending off a mid 1970's PX10 I picked up from eBay. It has been resprayed an rather odd, reddish, color. It will be coated gloss white (and I'll paint the fancy Nervex lugs black), and get new decals, also. It's going to become a fairly pricy bike, before it's over. But, that's okay. If no one wants to pay the price, I'll keep it. I've wanted one of these, forever.

Someone has retrofitted the PX with Campy equipment (except the crank), but I am going to save that stuff for another project and build up some track hubs and install a centerpull brake, more along the lines of original equipment.