The project continues apace. Thanks to Simon who lent me a big bag of tools, I hace stripped down the Peugeot to it's bare bones. Well, not completely bare, as I was not tooled up to remove the chainset or bottom bracket. Next step was to remove the old paint, which I started in the vening after a couple of drinks, and the smell of the paint thinners gave me a headache, and seemed to be more effective on my head than on my bike paint. Of course, prior to all this I had to go and get some kit. Painting tools (v. verniciare) - spray paint (bombeolette di vernice), primer (prima mano di vernie), sandpaper (carta vetrate) along with paint stripper, a wire brush, and an enormous spanner. Of course, the hard thing was finding all this stuff in Italy. When I went back to the UK last weekend, I landed after midnight, picked up my hire car, and whilst driving home (a bit homesick, schniff schniff) I passed the 24 hour Tesco and stopped in. I almost cried at having a shop that could do EVERYTHING, open at 2am. Wonderful. Such things don't exist in Italy, and I see the good and bad in this obviously. Every British high street is the same with same old shops, Poundsavers, Subway, McDonalds, Greggs, Boot, WHSmith, M&S, etc etc but at the same time it can be impossible to find "stuff" in Italy. Thankfully I remembered a DIY-type shop about 20 miles away and managed to get most stuff from there.
In the morning things didn't look so great. I decided to go and get professional help to remove my bottom bracket rather than wait for my tools to be shipped from the UK. I have had a hate hate affair with bike shops around here. I would expect there to be a huge amount of amazing bike shops here in real cycling country. Well there ain't. It has been very very disappointing. In Siena there are two bike shops - Fratelli Rossi which is more focused on hiring crap MTBs and doing moped stuff, and DF bike on an industrial estate which is never open and now seems to focus on bike hire. Further afield there is Gippo Bike - good and nice guys but they let me down whilst twiddling my L'Eroica bike (in fact - this bike! in it's last iteration) which meant I used Nencini sport a hundred kilometers away in Prato. Actually Nencini has recently expanded it's store and is where my Scott came from (second hand = usato). I was there recently with a friend looking for bikes and I was shocked that there was not a single one with electronic shifting in a really excellent and very large shop. Catch up Italy!
So, I went to DF bike which was the closest and they were shut of course. Then I went to Gippo Bike and they did me good. I had a good chat with them and the owner sorted it all out, getting past several silly obstacles, expected when a bottom bracket hasn't been removed for 25 years or more! In the end, we (yes, we) put the bike in a workshop table mounted vice to get the bottom bracket off. I also bought a very nice professional workstand for a very reasonable price which is great.
Outside in the sun, myself and Bunny sat and got all the paint off. Jeepers it was a lot of work, and I regret not buying one. No - that's not true. I am not doing it this way to save money (luckily enough - as it is FAR more expensive) but I am doing to give myself a bit of a bike education. So after hours of sanding my fingers off, we are at raw frame. I am surprised really that the Peugeot Esprit Carbolite 103 piece of crap is actually not too bad a frame when you get down to it.
Ready for priming!
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