Which way to go?

As I'm especially poor at the moment, I can't just order the coolest parts. So I'll probably aim for the cheap end now and upgrade later. Anyway this post is about which kind of drivetrain will I go for and not about the tight budged.

The bike was originally fitted with very nice clover themed single crankset. Those older singles are often very beautiful and have varied themes for the cut-outs, while the new single cranksets are made in all the possible colours and styles imaginable to furter fuel the fixie boom. It's harder to find a beautiful double crankset (like Stronglight 107), but I will try nevertheless.

First I must get a new bottom bracket (it's probably shot too), because why would someone use cottered cranks when they don't have to? I mean If they have done it once. (and the cotter bolts cling to your trousers). 

My options for a new bottom bracket are:
1. A sealed cartridge JIS-taper one from Velo-Orange
2. A new loose bearing BB from Harris Cyclery
3. A used or ond unused loose bearing BB from somewhere. Stronglight or nervar ought to be good enough.

I've alway liked things I can take a part and ordering stuff from outside of EU is always bothersome. For these reasons, I might go for option 3. The downside for that one is, that where one can stick an ISO-taper crankset on a JIS-taper BB spindle, it's not doable vice versa.     
      

Colours of anticipation

 To be frank, I started the blog after picking out the first part, the frame. I will write more about it once I actually get my hands on it. Because the paint on the thing is in quite bad condition and it's a bare frame, I don't have to feel bad of not trying to restore it to it's original specs. I will instead paint it the way I want it and use more modern, better parts. As it turns out, I'm not quite sure how I want to paint it. So I made a rough vector graphics sketch to try different colour schemes on. Here are a few samples.

I'll probably go with this light green design with darker
green for Automoto's trademark clover lugs and some
hand-drawn lines

Using black would be helpful since I know a place that sells really cheap
black 584 rims and I could use the hardest of paints used for steel roofs, which
doesn't come in many colours. Painting thin green or silver lines around the lugs
would create a really classic campeur-look.

I really like black and yellow combination, which would go nicely with my yellow
Ortlieb pannier bags. Then again I already have one yellow 700c Motobecane
touring frame stowed away waiting for this 650b fad to blow away.

Well since it only takes a fraction of a second to try out colours, I did try some crazier schemes. The problem is that it quickly stars looking like a fixie-project and we can't have that, can we?

Introduction

Hello. This is where my new blog kicks off.

I've always ridden a bike as my primary means of transportation, but a few years back I took part in a cyclocamping event. Soon after that, my ugly-ass hybrid bike got mutilated during an attempted theft.  I happened to find a 1965 Peugeot PL-40 city bike frame from the dumpster. I built it up using only free dumpster-grade parts and it turned out to become a nice bike. This is where my interest in bicycles deepened substantially. Then I bought and overhauled a 1980 Peugeot PF-10. And even though I like the lightness, acceleration and speed of a racer. I just can't enjoy riding it in the city, in fact, I find myself getting pissed off doing so. A racer is no good for anything.

The next natural step for me is to build a bicycle that fulfills all or at least most my needs. The most important criteria are:

1. She's a classic French beauty (I did consider going for a classic British lightweight)

2. She's made for loaded touring