Originally Posted by
conspiratemus1
I'm sure you're right and I would not ride that frame no matter who said he could repair it. Anything going wrong on the front end of bike is a disaster: even a zero-speed crash (like getting a shopping bag fouled in the spokes as happened to a woman I know) throws you to the pavement so hard it can break your face off your skull and nearly kill you.
But how is that really old aluminum aircraft like DC-3s are still able to fly safely? I know they get treated really gently and lovingly by their owners but still....they've outlived most of the people who were born when they were built. Then there are the B-52Hs that are still racking up millions of flying hours on active service 50 years after the last one rolled out of Boeing's factory. Do the aluminum airframe components get replaced?
The issue with an airframe, they get regular inspections, if a crack like that were found in an airframe, it would be repaired even if expensive to repair, because a replacement airframe means a new aircraft, and that means millions of dollars, in the case of a DC3 it's often a small airline where millions of dollars for new aircraft are not going to happen.
With a bicycle frame, when you can replace the frame with a new one for $500 - $1,000 it makes a lot less sense. The frame in question, needs to be partly disassembled, a new head tube found or made, then reassembled. You would need a frame shop that is experienced at this kind of thing, and the part needs to be available, and they haven't made that style of frame in over a decade, so you might need an AL machine shop to make one out of aluminum stock, if it's a cast part then you may be into casting costs and machining costs, it's not hard to spend the cost of a replacement frame on making the part. Welding isn't always a solution, AL needs a different welding rod for each alloy, which is fine if you know what alloy it is, sometimes you do, sometimes you don't.
To answer the OP's question, I vote, ornament.