Joe, my experiences were the same. Ten minute assembly because the factory did all the hard work and they were OK right out of the box. Some of the other stuff was a mess including certain Raleighs. Steve
>From: Joseph Bender-Zanoni <jfbender@umich.edu>
>To: Jerry & Liz Moos <moos@penn.com>, garth libre
><rabbitman@mindspring.com>
>CC: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
>Subject: Re: [CR]1973: $120 for a UO-8 and $200.00 for a PX-10?
>Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2001 13:36:22 -0700
>
>I put together many a U08 and A0-8. While these bikes have little nostalgic
>appeal to me, Peugeot had one thing going for it and that was a sense of
>quality control. I am not saying that the bikes were great, but they were
>consistently good, which was a pleasent surprise in the bike boom days. At
>that time almost every sub $150 dollar bike was a lottery for the
>conscientious mechanic when you opened the box. For example, the Italian
>bike favorite was the chainline from hell, 25% of the Motobecanes had forks
>bent in shipping (or otherwise), Raleighs had component changes from the
>catalog or forgot to braze a joint every now and then, Schwinns required
>assembling and taping the bars and the wheels were often atrociously built
>(or better put, merely laced).
>
>By contrast Peugeots were highly assembled out of the box. They were also
>shrink wrapped. Many of the adjustments were pretty close and I suspect
>some dealers passed them on to customers with no more than 10 minutes of
>assembly time. I don't remember too many frame defects either, although I
>was pretty young and hadn't developed as critical an eye at that time.
>Anyway, I thought I'd pass on this hidden virtue of the Peugeots when new.
>
>Joe