I'm working on a bike for a friend and the BB needs help. Seems that his local bike shop mechanics are too young to know about French BB threading. They were unable to remove the fixed cup, so they left it in place. The adjustable cup was replaced with a BSC cup. The threads in the shell seem to be OK, as I threaded the fixed cup into the left side and it went in, though with a bit of a struggle.
The bike is a variant of a Peugeot UO-18, branded Helium. It is painted yellow with black lugs. It has a tab on the left seatstay for a bottle generator along with fold-over tabs under the down tube to hold the generator wire. It also has the goofy single-side shifter braze-on on the down tube with the wrap-around band for the left (front) shifter that is made to fit around the braze-on.
Does anyone know the connection between the Helium brand and Peugeot?
If you have a set of French BB cups that they are willing to sell, please contact me off list? Something suitable for this level bike would be OK.
I am also looking for an extra French BB lockring. Should be NOS or very nice condition used. I needed to remove the adjustable cup from a French bike that I own in order to determine positively that the Helium had a BSC cup installed. I seem to have misplaced the lockring. To add insult to injury, I gave a bunch of scrap metal to a local scrapper and I'm thinking the lockring was in that load of stuff. DOH!
Sincerely,
Jason Cloutier
Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA