Originally Posted by
BenCooper
Retrofitting S&S couplings is a good way to see how much stress there is in frames - I've seen the full range, from frames that don't move at all, to ones that move a whole tube diameter or more.
Now that is an interesting point. So when one makes an S&S bike from scratch, one pre-assembles the fittings to the tubes, and everything should be pretty cool. So then one makes the bike, and cold sets it as required to make it a well aligned bike. Then one undoes the S&S couplers and everything jumps out of alignment. So then what do you do to ensure the individual tube segments are aligned with the global tube alignment? You could end up chasing two different states of alignment and if the work created enough distortion, it could become rather frustrating?