Experience from a couple of trips on vintage road bikes this summer

Short version: absolutely loved it!

So I did two trips this summer: one four day ride on the Alpe-Adria from Villach to Trieste in July with a couple of friends, and one seven day solo trip from Copenhagen to Oslo end of August.

First one was on my main commuter, a 70-something Peugeot PA10 that I got from my grandpa and restored from wreck status last year. It’s an entry level road bike with some slightly newer Shimano hubs and an upgraded front derailleur that I snatched from an abandoned bike in our backyard. Only changes I did specifically for a bit of a longer trip was putting on some 32mm Schwalbe Marathons and attaching a luggage rack. The rack (also a backyard “borrow”) was a bit of a puzzle, having no mounting points on the seat stays, but it worked with a couple of steel plates and some bolts to squeeze them together. I’ll see if I have a picture of it somewhere.

The PX performed wonderfully the whole way with zero mechanicals. Even some steep (although short) climbs went without too much trouble.

Copenhagen-Oslo I did on a Peugeot 1978 PL8. It’s fairly similar to the PX, but with a slightly more relaxed geometry and mounting points for a rack, mudguards and a dynamo. I think it was originally fitted as more of a city bike. This one I got from an older gentleman who had stored it unused in his garage for decades. It has all original parts and is really fun to use. The only problem I had was that the back wheel would pop out of the dropout on the drivetrain side. This would happen either if I put a bit more pressure on it in a high gear (chain on the outermost cog in the back), or when pushing really hard on steep climbs. In the end I just avoided the steepest hills and tried to be a bit conscious of my gear choices. My guess is I have to change the little metal plate between the wingnut and the dropout.

Now for some specific challenges that arise from using these vintage bikes. The first main obstacle was fitting a tent between the drop bars. The old style bars are very narrow, and so to fit a tent and still have space for different hand positions and braking was not super easy. In the end I figured how to fold my tent tarp narrow and thick instead of long and thin and strapped the poles on the underside of the handlebar roll. In the end I had a Grand Canyon Richmond 1 and my sleeping pad in the front.

The second challenge was keeping the handlebar roll from interfering with the exposed front brake cable. This was solved with an ingenious bent steel bar invention from another Reddit user, I’ll post a link in the comments.

Final challenge was climbing. I guess this might be a problem in general with road bikes, but the lowest gear is really not that low when going uphill with gear. The bikes are heavy in themselves as well. Both my trips were reasonably flat, although I had some burning thighs at points in Sweden, when getting closer to the Norwegian border.

The down-tube friction shifters can also be a little bit tiring on hilly sections where you shift a lot, but nothing too bad.

Otherwise both bikes did really well, and it was super fun to spend some good hours on them. I did both paved, gravel and even some (very) light single-track without too much trouble. 100% going to continue with this in the future, and am already looking forward to my next trip!

Hopefully this could prove helpful or informative for someone considering heading out on a vintage bike. And if not, at least I got to share a bit.

by ehildeb