Thumpic

I started to prep my frame for touch up and found a crack in the weld between the seat stay and seat tube. It could not be seen under the gunk and seat post bolt. I know what this means and it sure does piss me off!

I will call the lbs tomorrow to find a frame welder. What's a ball park figure on this repair?

Chombi

If the crack is right at the brazing and not the actual seat lug/clamp or seat stay tube, I would say it's very repairable. You will just have to do more repainting on the bike on that area as the re-brazing will burn the paint.

Chombi

clasher

It'll likely cost you more to have a frame builder fix it than the frame is worth, barring sentimental attachment, of course. It's an easy joint to re-braze though.

Andrew F

I'd clean the paint from the area before anything else just to see what you have. The pic. looks more like a sloppy repair than a break.

Thumpic

I'm in the bike about $70..(plus $50 for the dedicated crank puller).....I can get my money and more on parts for sure; but I was sure hoping to ride it for a while and then flip it........

Scooper

Seat stays that are brazed "side tack" as this one is are easily repaired by a framebuilder, and it should not be expensive (much less than $100). The joint gets heated to the melting point of the brazing filler and separated enough to clean both the lug and the stay, then fluxed and rebrazed.

Thumpic

That's exactly what I'll do..............

big chainring 

Whats the underside of the seat stay look like. There is a lot of contact area there and you may just be seeing voids in the original brazing.
Clean it up and inspect further before you make a decision.

unworthy1

might not even be that: might just be typical sloppy Raleigh brazing that resulted in corrosion to start up in the joint. For sure do more investigating of it before you rush to a conclusion. One small point: it takes more heat to melt old bronze out than to make the original brazed joint...on the up-side white paint is fairly easy to touch up.

Thumpic

this is getting ugly...... I don't think it is a crack; I think is is a very sorry weld.....and this is on a bike from the Carlton workshop!!

Scooper

Picky point: It's brazed, not welded.

vjp

This is true, but the builders I know would grind/file/sand and then braze it, not melt the brass out/off.

Thumpic

Thanks....

but.......I now think that the paint only may have failed over this joint because of the void in the braze. Just below the juncture is a bridge wel-- uh brazed to the seat stays. This shows no sign of seat stay movement...no paint flaking or distortion. I'm thinking that even though it's a sorry braze job; it may be stable. Am I deluding myself?

Oldpeddaller

Worth trying to fix it yourself? Admittedly I'm only looking at a photo but before surrendering I think I'd try filing the area clean, heating it with a gas torch and running some silver brazing rod into those voids. For a small job like this, self fluxed low temperature rods are available for £4.99 (guessing $12?) and a cannister butane/propane torch should provide enough heat after a while - but this approach will only work if there is no movement in the joint as it stands at present. It's not suitable for frame building (flowing braze into head lugs etc.) but might just sort out the poor brazing by adding more material to reinforce it. File down the repair when cold and flex the joint to test it before accepting it. Cheaper than a new frame and you're painting it anyway. Or if you can find a metal worker who makes steel gates or similar they might stitch it up for you for cheap while doing another job. Raleigh Carlton made these to fill orders, not to last fifty years and it's a sign of success that we expect them to. Just my 2 cents, YMMV.

big chainring 

Put a little bondo in the voids,(heck a little caulk or some schmutz), sand and touch-up paint.

repechage

From your follow on shot, it looks like there were bubbles of flux in the bronze, near the surface, not a sign of a great example of brazing art, if flux was in those bubble voids, then moisture penetrating the paint over time would do it, remember flux melts in water, high temp water faster. You have some more clearing and wire brushing too, then a magnifying glass and or crack check dye. There is a lot of braze material there. If you find copper which on a typical bronze joint screams overheating, do not despair as Raleigh tacked things with copper before brazing with bronze.

The "repair" might be to file out the ugly and flow some more bronze in, but let the framebuilder see before you take a file to it.

unterhausen

there is definitely a crack in something. With the extremely poor quality of the brazing I suspect that it's the filler metal that's cracked. If you could take a picture from the approximate location of the downtube water bottle cage that would be good. The crack goes around as far as I can see it.

I have fixed a number of '70s production bikes that had cracked seat stay/seat tube lug joints. Maybe I'm too cheap on this, but I can't see charging more than $25 for fixing that, it's a fairly quick repair. In 1980 I used to charge $5-10 for something like that.

Oldpeddaller

Thumpic - looks like Unterhausen's provided the answer and a solution - love a happy ending!

clasher

If I had a torch in my garage I'd do fixes like that for a beer or two. It seems to me that anyone in the business of frame building/repair charges an arm and a leg for simple brazing.

cudak888 

Yet another example of why I don't buy Raleigh for keeps - or expect them to hold up, at any rate.

-Kurt

mkeller234

Unfortunately... that is not surprising. Kurt had an international that was insanely bad.

Andrew F

Well that like saying all Schwinns are boat anchors. the reality is Raleigh put out a lot of bikes, some were crap no doubt, others were very fine machines which have held up to 50+ years of continued use.

Well I just fell into your trap, Kurt....feel free to devour me at will

unterhausen

I've seen some really nice Raleighs, but more bad ones than good. The bike boom really was bad for the quality of a lot of companies. It was good for them in the short run, but they're gone now.

cudak888 

Don't hate yourself for it, Andrew. Too many people idolize Raleigh's garbage (Sheldon's site doesn't help any) for any single person to counteract the effects.

Not to mention a '73 Competition - still in my possession - which is pretty terrible in its own right. That, and every single Sports I've owned (all sloppy, with exception to my three '51s - which are superb), a Gran Sport, the mass of Super Courses I've seen (of which one seemed decent), and the surprisingly frequent cases I've read here of lugs separating from tubing, or dropouts separating from fork blades.

-Kurt