Mark, I'm not absolutely sure, but I understand that some Peugots sold in New Zealand were made under licence by Healings, who were the agent for Peugot at that time. In 1990 I went to the auction of the Healing plant in Christchurch and I still have a couple of french thread bottom bracket shells that we got as part of a job lot. Surprisingly, I used a few over the next few years, generally on French frames with cracked BB shells. That's a market which seems to have dried up.
A few years back I built a touring frame out of metric sized Columbus GT tubing. None of the tubes fit my tube blocks, so I had to use a workstand to hold the tubes for mitring. It wouldn't have been my first choice, but I already owned the tubeset...
The rear derailler hanger thread is M10 x 1. Its a standard thread that you can get readily from engineers suppliers. DB
Mark Battley wrote:
> My 1979 Peugeot has metric diameter Vitus 172DB tubing (26.0 TT, 28.0
> ST&DT), but with an English threaded BB. Stem was 22.0, but a 22.2 fitted
> with only very slight mods to the wedge.
>
> A standard (Shimano) FD clamped on without any problems. When I got the bike
> I expected all sorts of hassles with fitting more modern components, but it
> turned out to be quite straightforward.
>
> On a related subject:
> >The one I have appears to be a lugged, steel-frame 10-speed built
> >around (I'm guessing) 1980 or so.... I've recently read that many older
> >Peugeots had an odd rear dropout which can't accept modern rear derailleur
> >hardware. The question is, how do I tell whether the bike I have can take
> >modern derailleur hardware?
>
> If it is about 1980 you might be okay. Easiest way probably is to try - see
> if you can pick up a trashed derailleur from a bike shop and see if the
> thread fits. My understanding is that if it is not the same any bike shop
> should be able to retap it to a "modern" thread. In my case the thread is
> "modern", but when I got the bike the one non-standard component was the RD
> which had been replaced by an early Suntour Superb-pro, so it is possible
> that it may already have been modified.
>
> Mark Battley.