Late '50's/early '60's P. Peschi

I "inherited" this frame from another local vintage bike enthusiast who has a thing for older French bikes ( including restoring a late '40's Rene Herse ). With too many on going projects he sold it to me plus a good number of period components for a very fair price for the frame and wheel set, and only had to pay a small amount for the rear derailleur, the rest of the components were given to me which was nice of him. I still need a few items such as stem, handlebars, bottom bracket adjustable cup, cables, and shift levers but at least I have a good start.

Some of the included parts consist of Universal side pull brakes, steel seat post, a neglected Ideale 43 saddle ( not by him, just long exposure that brought on drying and cracking ), Campagnolo early Record rear derailleur, Valentino front derailleur and Campagnolo Record steel cage pedals. The frame came with a set of wheels which have early '60's or so Normandy high flange hubs with Mavic tubular rims. I might go with some Mafac center pull brakes as the bike had a front cable hanger suggesting it had them at one time.

The Peschi frame itself takes a 26.4mm seat post so most likely Reynolds tubing but cannot say for sure - the fork steerer is Durifort. Lugs and bottom bracket shell are Nervex and overall it is well made with nice touches like the fish mouth style ends where the fork blades and rear stays meet the drop outs, which are Simplex forged. It is a bit beat up with plenty of scrapes,scratches and chips but I will be touching up the worse with as close a matching paint as i can find.

My budget these days will ensure it will take me a bit of time to complete it as something I can ride, hopefully in 3 or 4 months. If anyone has any information on this builder it would be appreciated, I have yet to come up with anything other than an association with Urago as they are both from Nice, I believe Peschi built some frames for Urago. Interesting how he used the word " Constructeur" as part of the head badge.

That's a classy looking machine, I like the warap around seat stays finished to a fine triangle

Shaun

Re:

I always thought Ideale were better that Brooks, Looks like the very first Campagnolo pedals with the oil seals.

We used to file a bit off the stop on the gear hanger so that the parallelogram arms were further forward to improve the gear change. When I could get them I used the top sprung arms from the sport (single roller) model as a further improvement.

Keith

The pedals appear to have metal end caps with a very small hole in the center with the words "Patent Campagnolo" - I do know the earlier ones had those steel caps instead of the later plastic version. They still spin very smoothly and have Campagnolo white grease, no way of knowing when they were last serviced but it still looks quite good so I think I will just clean them up for now.

As far the Ideale saddle is concerned a judicious application of Proofide is all I am going to attempt and hope for the best. I would like to hold on to it, getting it free helps of course but I just hope I can save it. I am not heavy so that might make a difference. It was bad enough originally that it was soaked in some water and newspaper used to help reshape it, seems to be holding it's form well enough. I will be using a Nervar Star crank set currently on the Urago once I manage to install a Stronglight 49D on it.

That wrap around seat stay does look pretty interesting and was also used by Urago so there might be some influence going on there - from which one I do not know. It is unfortunate there appears to be so little information available on many smaller frame builders as they are an important part of cycling history.