Replacing brakes on an old bike, help!

[nimbus510]

Hey there,

I just got into riding a couple months ago after selling my car and turning to my bicycle as my primary means for transportation.

I got the bike for free from my brother but it was definitely nothing fancy. Very old and needed some work, including brakes. Put new brakes on there and while it was a pain getting them to reach, they ended up working great.

Well now I just got my hands on an older Peugeot that looks much nicer, way lighter, shifts better, and so on. The only bad thing about it seems to be the brakes.

I thought maybe I could just take the new brakes I purchased for my original bike and slap them on the "new" bike. But now that I'm actually looking at them, I'm not sure that will work! The metal piece that the current brakes mount to is just a metal tube with holes drilled out vertically, as opposed to a hole going horizontally as I would expect.

I have been looking around online and haven't been able to find anything that would seem to work. Has anyone else encountered this before, and if so how can I get around it?

Picture of the frame itself:


Picture of the rear brakes that came with:

[DaveM]

Yeah, these are very rare. I doubt you can find anything modern that will mount. French bikes are the only thing more incompatible with everything else than Schwinns.

I see a couple options:
- Drill the cross piece for a normal horizontal mount brake. (I would NOT do this. You would be creating a weak spot right where you need strength.)
- If the mounting post on the old caliper screws on (meaning that it is not rivetted to the caliper), you might be able to retro fit that post to a more modern caliper. Possible, but I'm guessing this will be tricky at best.
- Just keep using the old brake on the back. The back brake is only about 1/3 of your total stopping power anyway. If you can lock up the rear wheel, a more powerful brake won't get you anything anyway. If you put a good brake lever, good cables, and good brake pads on the old caliper, it should work fine. Those old center pull calipers with a cross over cable are a bit of a pain to set up, but they work OK.

Obviously, I'd suggest option 3.

Here's a couple sites to help you identify an old Peugeot:
http://cyclespeugeot.com/SerialNumbers.html
http://retropeugeot.com/

Good luck!

[Joe_W]

There are also brakes that come with two metal panels. The seat stays are "sandwiched" between those two and the center (mounting) bolt of the brake pulls those metal plates together and fixes them to the frame.

@Dave: What kind of cable housing would you suggest? Housing (and cable routing) is critical. If there is flex in the housing the brakes just won't work all that well...