Tomm Willians

I’m looking at possibly buying this 1988 Waterford Paramount frame with Campy dropouts for a project. The seller was forthright stating that it had a dent in the down tube and provided pics showing the damage.
Can anyone give me an estimate of what fixing the dent would cost and how much would be a good price for the frame in this condition?

coffeesnob

dont know the cost but perhaps a better way would be too sand it, and fill it in with weld then grind and polish smooth and then repaint.

sch

Down tube not accessible internally for expander approach, so options more expensive than coffeesnob suggests would be
dent removal car repair place. This would involve tack welding pulling rods to dent and using puller device to pull out the dent.
You could reduce the dent with external tube compression using a large block of iron with a hole bored through it the diameter
of the tubing and then the block cut in half and polished. The idea is to clamp the halves on either side of the dent well lubed
with grease and squeeze the halves together. These are available premade but I don't recall their nomenclature. The squeeze
will reduce the size of the dent. Simplest approach is bondo the dent after sanding and repaint. Note: if powder coating is
a possibility you must use such as High Temp Lab Metal to fill but it is best applied AFTER the powder coater blasts the paint off
as the blasting will remove the Lab Metal as well. Or the powder coater could mask off the area. Cost of all this? Probably at
least $100 plus paint. Cheapest is sand clean, bondo and patch the paint if you can match the color, maybe $30-50???.

Finally if steel frame, frame builder could replace the tube probably for north of $150, maybe $300. Dunnoh, ask on frame builder subforum.

Here is an older discussion: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/dent-removal.html And a youtube on frame blocks:

bark_eater 

Not even pretending to know, but I would guess that a frame builder could roll this out, fill with soft solder and sand it flush in an hour. I figure any real craftsman is worth $100 an hour. Most work for considerably less. Just rolling the dent and filling with a suitable bondo product would be less involved and do less paint damage. I have reduced dents significantly with home made maple blocks with minimum paint damage. Its the paint condition after the repair and filling that would cost the most money to bring the bike back to original condition. As far as negotiating the unknown price, I'd guess a 25% devaluation would be end up somewhere between $100 and $200. After a $100 repair the devaluation would be somewhere between $99 and $199.... Throw another $500 at paint the value might be back to where it was before the unfortunate occurrence.

bikemike73 

I would contact Waterford directly and ask.
Lot of great suggestions !!

Iride01 

Not being museum quality and perfect condition with original paint that looks like it just rolled out the factory door. It's not worth much. IMO.

However it's a great riding frame. I have one I put 11 speed 105 5800 on. So it's worth what you are willing to pay and how well your ability is to find another frame of the correct size in better condition in a reasonable amount of time. 150 USD would be max for me unless I had no other potential finds.

I'd just use bondo or other filler to smooth it up some. Paint it and be done.