Originally Posted by
rosefarts
We like to think that there's a calculation for everything on the bike. Really though, it's nowhere nearly as precise as that. It's not a space shuttle.
The biggest concern is mental. How does he feel about his repair at speed?
I have a welded extension on a fork of mine, it's great but I got a speed wobble my first day after the welding. Maybe because of the huge descents and high winds that day. Not sure. It's in my mind though and eating at me.
Same with the OP. He needs to decide whether he wants to fly into a switchback at 50mph on that. It can probably take it but does he want to? From his posts though, I don't think that's in the future of this bike.
After taking the repaired bike to the shop to have them inspect it, I feel that what you are saying about it not being a space shuttle has a lot of truth to it. A bit of fuss has been made in this thread by a few folks that make it seem like some kind of geometric equasion / calculus problem that would only be fixed if correct to the .00000001 percentile or even not at all. Quite frnakly some of the comments here made me a little anxious to have it looked at. However, when I got there with the bike the guys at the shop were so confidently nonchalant about if after just doing a visual inspection and seeing the pics of the repair. They actually said not to listen to the people "poo pooing" it online lol. Ride it and forget the repair, no normal use by me is going to cause the top tube to fail.
So while my skill set isn't such that I would be able to fly into a switchback at 50mph, (not even close
) I am now very much interested in putting some miles on it to give it the old litmus test so to speak. It wion't see much more riding this season though as it's getting pretty chilly here so it will be going on the trainer very soon until next spring. I'm hoping to come back in a year and give an update after at least 1000 miles or so.
As far as the mental aspect, I have about 50 miles on it since being repaired and between the reassurance I got from the bike shop and how it feels on the road I feel pretty confident. I've had it up to 40 mps for what that's worth but the bike felt great so I had no anxiety or apprehension about it. Looking forward to more time in the saddle with it.
I think I like the bike better now that I have so much time invested into it. I'm kind of proud of the repair in a way.