Peugeot Optimum - winter bike maybe?

MartinB123

Senior Retro Guru
Saw this frameset advertised a few weeks ago, and having a bit of a penchant for Peugeot frames I duly bought it. It's 531, nothing too special but I really like how it looks and it's in decent condition.

Trying to scale down bikes and limiting myself to 4, so this will be a winter bike and probably turbo trainer bike as well.

Components will be mainly Shimano 600, with a Campag 50/34 crankset. I have a pair of Shimano 600 brifters, but one has a dodgy bracket so will need to source a replacement, or use the spare shimano 600 downtube shifters that I have.

Tried a set of wheels on to check clearance for 700x28s and they fit fine, so hopefully she'll be built up in the coming days!
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20200721_105156.jpg
    IMG_20200721_105156.jpg
    1.3 MB · Views: 1,143
Got this partially built up last night. Fitted a spare Stronglight A9 headset and a Campagnolo crankset in 48/34 - quite compact! (I thought it was a 50/34 until I looked closer.)

New chain to go on over the weekend alongside brakes, shifters and new cables too. Should be fairly nice to ride :)
 
Re:

I had one of these, I found mine on eBay for £100 back in 2016, it turned out to be about 2cm too big for me but I got plenty of use out of it before selling it on.

You won't be disappointed with the performance of this bike when it's built up, I think my Optimum was probably one of the quickest bikes I've ever ridden.

Very tight rear triangle. Mine had all of its RX100 components, the only thing I initially changed was the pedals and seat post.

I've now got the Claud Butler equivalent of this bike, same lilac colour, same 531 frame, I think the only difference is the forks are cromo on the Claud and not 531 as they appeared to be on the Peugeot.
 
I had a bit of a purple patch in terms of local bikes coming up for sale and duly purchased a few recently so had to free up some space in my collection! In the the end she had a full 105 6 speed groupset fitted and rode really well. I sold it last week but here's a pic:

$_86.JPG
 
Re:

That looks very tidy, you've got to love the early nineties paint jobs, wish those colour schemes would make a comeback.

I can imagine it rode a treat with the 105 groupset.
 
Back
Top